


Box of Every Flavour Fills: Haikyuu

by haruun



Series: Tumblr Compilation [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Minor Violence, Multi, also happy things like fluff so don't worry, basically it's just a jumble of stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-09-21 04:52:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 86
Words: 237,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17037017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haruun/pseuds/haruun
Summary: Originally fills for tumblr asks. Got some bits and bobs here, sorted chronologically where newer chapters are the newer fills. Warnings for individual stories are in the notes and (rare) explicit chapters will be marked.





	1. Jealous Tsukishima, sneaky Lev

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hi! best of luck! how 'bout a scenario of tsukki being jealous of his girlfriend because of lev, tsukki knows lev has a crush on her but she's oblivious. thanks!  
> 

Okay, so the thing is, he didn’t want to be here in the first place. It was fucking Christmas Eve, for god’s sake, and here he was, surrounded by a bunch of volleyball nerds whacking large balls at each other when it was a perfectly good day to sit and vegetate in his room. …On a second thought, he could almost hear his brother whining from behind, begging him for a bro-date to the mall and Jesus Christ maybe volleyball was okay after all. He didn’t really have much time to decide anyway, not when Lev had risen up from the other side of the net like some corpse from the grave and smacked the volleyball right into his nose.

“Fuck,” Kei choked out as he basically collapsed onto the floor in a heap. There was something trickling down his nose and he was pretty sure it wasn’t mucus. Gingerly, he tugged his face upwards with pinched fingers to the bridge of his nose and shot Lev the best glare he could. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should?”

“Whaaaaaaat? You were spacing out!” Lev whined. Kei watched with a distinct lack of amusement as the outrageously tall, Russian idiot started to pace backwards and forwards, shooting Kuroo pleading looks. He could tell that Lev was torn between feeling defensive and also incredibly guilty, but heck, he wasn’t going to help him solve that inner turmoil.

“He was spacing out and you were staring at some ass, Lev, so don’t think you’re off the hook!” Kuroo hollered from behind, and really, just when Kei’s day couldn’t get any better he had to be reminded of how the blundering moron in front of him had a crush on his girlfriend. Lev’s face was the colour of the setting goddamn sun and there was zero shame in his expression, instead preferring to stare blatantly at the girl laughing next to the scoreboard. At least he was trying to be discrete before he got called out, now he just didn’t give a fuck. Kei was about to not give a fuck either, and just smash that lard into next week.

Was he always this angry? Probably.

“Hey,” he waved a lazy hand at his darling, “aren’t girlfriends supposed to be loving and tender when their SO’s been hit in the face?”

She nodded quickly with an abashed expression and hurried over to his side, pressing a towel to his cheek. Kei wasn’t the type to go for PDA, even less so his socially anxious girlfriend, but sometimes he had to admit that these moments felt nice. It was quiet sort of intimacy, and he slowly glanced sideways, a small smile tilting his lips upwards as he watched her face fill with worry, and most of all, love. It didn’t matter how many people were watching them right now. It didn’t matter if he had lost his nose entirely for all he cared, it was enough to have her small fingers press against his own, helping him stem the flow of the nosebleed.

“Maaan, I feel so bad! I really didn’t mean it, ____-san, my fingers just kinda, uh, slipped really badly? I’m sorry to cause you trouble and everything- can I help? Do you need me to hold something for you?”

Okay, blissful moment gone.

He couldn’t find it in himself to even say anything to Haiba Lev, blind idiot extraordinaire. Much to his dismay, the welcome touch of his girlfriend disappeared from his skin and he watched in silence as she quickly brought two hands up in the air and shook her head vehemently.

“It’s quite alright Haiba-san,” she shot him what looked like a comforting smile, “it’s just a nosebleed, and you didn’t cause any trouble at all. Accidents must happen all the time for you, don’t they?”

The grey haired idiot lit up the moment she spoke to him. Kei, used to hearing her voice almost daily, thought it to be quite a soft and youthful sound, but to Lev it looked like the angel Gabriel had descended to sing to him about baby Jesus. The nosebleed was getting worse, and she really needed to stop smiling at Lev like that.

“They do!” Lev replied with a blinding grin, “too bad we don’t all have pretty girls nearby to patch us up when we get hurt.”

Her cheeks turned a vibrant pink and she laughed, the sound cutting through the haze of are you fucking kidding me in Kei’s mind. “What about a lady manager? I’m sure a lot of girls would love to join your team after seeing you play,” she asked.

Lev took a step forwards and leaned down into her. His smile was unwavering, and it seemed to only grow larger as he paused to give her a bold wink. “Wanna be our manager?”

“Oh, I couldn’t, I’m too careless. I’d do a terrible job!”

“Awwww, but your cheers would power me for days! It’d be enough for you to just be there~”

“Then I don’t have to be your manager, I’ll just come and cheer you on during your matches!”

“That would be amazing! I’ll take you around and show you the great places to grab food around Nekoma, and we’ll-”

“I am RIGHT HERE.” Everything around a five mile radius seemed to still at Kei’s glacial tone. It held a light tone of betrayal, fury and a soft hint of certain death, and Lev’s colour drained a little as he remembered that Tsukishima was sitting on the ground the entire time, watching them. Lev had stepped close enough to almost kiss her, and honestly, he might have ended up doing so if it weren’t for the interruption.

Unfortunately, such a conclusion was pretty obvious to anyone who had vision for the past five minutes, and that included Kei. He stood up with a surprising amount of swiftness, turned to Lev, and unleashed.

“If you don’t want to cause trouble next time, how about keeping your eyes to your opponents and not someone else’s girlfriend? Are you fucking stupid? You haven’t said a word to the person you’ve concussed but sure, let’s bounce over and hit on his girlfriend while he bleeds from the nose because it’s not like I have eyes to actually see that you’re hitting on my girlfriend.”

There was a low whistle from somewhere in his peripheral, and Kei would bet his glasses that it was probably Kuroo. That man had observational powers of a god, but zero motivation for subtlety.

“Mind if we take a break?” Without waiting for an answer, Kei silently made his way out of the gymnasium. The soft footsteps behind him let him know that his girlfriend was catching up with him. Good.

They took a seat next to the water fountains, and for a moment there was a tremendous amount of awkwardness between them. Kei cleared his throat.

“I’m kinda bad at noticing these things, aren’t I, Kei?” She spoke first, without hurry, surprising Kei mid-breath. He let out a laboured sigh and chuckled, slightly winded.

“Yeah, you’re pretty crap. Why do you think I had to bring flowers the first time we went on a date?”

“You’re right,” she was laughing now, her eyes crinkled up at the ends, and Kei would be lying if he said that hearing her happy didn’t make him fall in love with her just a little bit more. “You hate cheesy things, but I’d have thought that we were just going out to see a movie as friends if you didn’t.”

“I’m glad you know,” came the deadpan response.

The silence between them was much more comfortable now, and quietly, she laced her fingers in between his and rested their hands on her lap. It was cold, snowing even, and they were both in gym gear, but they kept each other warm. Neither of them kept the time, but soon they could hear the sounds of dissent growing louder in the gym.

“We should probably get back. They’re probably very afraid of you right now, Kei.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” he muttered as they got to their feet, ready to head back into the gym, “if Lev had enough survival instinct to feel fear, he wouldn’t be such an idiot.”

The hand around his tightened, and he glanced sideways to see her smile brightly.

“You have nothing to worry about, Haiba-san is definitely not my type.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mhmm. It’s Kuroo-san you have to watch out for, I can’t resist the bad boy type.”

“You-!”

It was a chilly Christmas Eve, but amidst his overwhelming irritation and love for this woman, he barely had time to feel cold at all.


	2. Spy AU with Hinata and Kageyama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by seishun-da-ne:
>
>>   
> spy au special agents sunshine (hinata) and dark (kageyama) have finally wiggled and hopped their way past the excessively booby trapped seijoh base and move to confront the evil mastermind oikawa!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I… have a distinct feeling this wasn’t what you were angling for in your prompt, but it really ran away with me. I hope you like it all the same! (There’s also some sneaky IwaOi and some less-than-sneaky KageHina, I hope you don’t mind.)_

“Neeeeee, Hinata-kun, don’t you like tea?”

Sunshine shifted in his chair uncomfortably. His pants were sticking to his thighs from all the sweat, and there was a really high chance that his genitals were shrivelling up from the sheer awkwardness of the situation. Dark glanced at him, scoffed and crossed his own legs unabashedly.

“He doesn’t,” Dark replied flatly, “and I don’t either. I like milk.”

Oikawa tapped his chin thoughtfully, his mouth open in a graceful ‘O’ and nodded.

“Even though I wasn’t talking to you at all, Tobio-chan, I’ll keep that in mind for next time!”

“H-Hey,” stammered Sunshine, “don’t tell me there’s going to be a next time?!”

“Why not?” Oikawa smiled and leaned forwards. His eyes were bright with amusement and as comforting as that was, Sunshine couldn’t stop staring at the slightly feral curl of Oikawa’s smile. He wasn’t afraid, it was his job after all, but… tea? There was probably a reason why he was more of a field agent than a hacker. Dark was the one who handled the thinking, even though it seemed like he had given up on his brain at the present moment.

“You’re gonna get punished if you go back empty handed right?” Oikawa continued, glancing nonchalantly at his fingernails as he did so, “and I really don’t want to sweat in this suit today, so how about we make a deal?”

Dark looked up at that. “What kind of deal?”

“It gets kind of lonely here, so how about we make this a bi-weekly thing?” Oikawa rose to his feet and stretched, his legs tensing up just ever so slightly and both Sunshine and Dark found their gazes trailing along those firm, sculpted thighs. They both paused when they reached… a certain area, and their gazes met. Sunshine’s face bloomed into a rose pink, and Dark choked a little on his saliva. They didn’t notice Oikawa watching them just as intently from the corner of his eye, and his smile turned just a little more angelic than before.

“The thing is, you two, those traps really weren’t for you. Neither were all those bombings, really. Oh, and the plane- that plane was definitely not supposed to fly over your headquarters. I’ve got a pilot to fire, I promise,” laughed Oikawa, “and how did you two even get past the third floor? I hope you get a raise for that!”

There was an awkward silence where Sunshine prayed to the heavens that Dark would put his mouth to use this time and say something, and Dark was on his end of the loveseat, burning a hole through Sunshine’s clump of orange hair by the force of his stare. Oikawa tapped his pale, lean fingers against his leather seat patiently, and waited.

It was Sunshine who broke the stalemate first.

“You made that thing way too small! Kage- I mean, Dark and I had to basically lie on each other to pass through that small-ass gap of yours!” Sunshine looked torn between feeling embarrassed and indignant as he continued his rant, “and what was with that water part?! You made us- us…” he trailed off. The turmoil was over, he was officially more embarrassed than indignant now, and he dropped his face into his hands in shame.

“You made us kiss,” Dark muttered. Oikawa looked absolutely delighted.

“So it works! I’m glad you two came by to test things out for me. I wasn’t quite sure if the oxygen exchanging system would work as I intended, but I’m glad to see that it brought you two lovebirds closer.” He leaned forwards, leering at them both with bright eyes, “you liked it right? Your heartbeats really went up during those sections.”

Dark jumped to his feet, his eyes almost too wide for his face and his skin too red to be healthy. He shook his head and hands in a violent ‘no’, spluttering, “it was ‘cus we were out of air! What- what are you even on about, Oikawa?!”

It was slightly unfortunate that he hadn’t chosen that moment to resume his staring at Sunshine, because if he did he would have noticed the slight hurt that bled into Sunshine’s usually brilliant gaze. Oikawa did though, and he fell back into his chair with a dramatic sigh. His fingers brushed through his hair like it was smoother than lubricant, and then he let his hand fall, fingers pointed at the two bumbling morons in front of him.

“That’s that fixed then. You two are coming back in two week’s time for some weekly couple’s therapy from your senpai Tooru. At this rate, neither of you two are going to get anywhere until I’m fifty! And I really don’t want to be fifty. Imagine those crow’s feet, and those wrinkles…” Oikawa cringed, and pressed a delicate finger against his forehead, soothing away those imaginary flaws.

They didn’t really have a choice though. Oikawa was right, Ukai would probably skin them alive if they came back empty handed, it’d be a better option for them to just say that they reached a dead end and would try again in the next operation. Even if it meant that they’d have to come back. Through all those traps again. Just to see Oikawa in his suit, pressing them about their relationship. Relationship. That word sent a simultaneous shudder and a full-body blush through both agents.

Maybe… it wouldn’t be so bad after all. Sunshine snuck an inquisitive gaze at Dark, taking in his stern expression, those piercing eyes and his soft, navy hair that smelled like fresh peppermint shampoo. It wasn’t something he’d forget anytime soon, not after they had to be that close to each other for that constricting room trial on the third floor. Sunshine blushed some more.

“I don’t like tea,” Sunshine repeated, this time with much more confidence and he raised his head up swiftly, meeting Oikawa’s intense stare without faltering, “but I like orange juice.”

“Meat buns too,” came a quiet yet determined admission from Dark, who had also decided to meet Oikawa’s eyes, “we didn’t eat before we came, so we’d like some meat buns.”

Oikawa’s beam held the radiance of a thousand suns.

OMAKE:

“Who the hell were you waiting for then with those traps? That goddamn plane sent our boss into a frenzy for a week you know.”

“Oh, I was just trying to get someone’s attention. You guys have a sort of celebrity in your department right?”

“…Iwaizumi-san?”

“Yeah, him! I was keeping tabs on your building one afternoon and he showed up on my surveillance screen and have you seen that man? I’m going to make him come here, no matter what it takes.”

“I don’t think that he’ll want to make out with his partner just so that he can pass that water tank to meet you, Oikawa.”

“Of course not, that’s why I’ll meet him outside! We’ll do it together~”

“…For your sake, I hope it’s love at first sight.”


	3. Flinching during a fight, ft. Yamaguchi, Tsukishima, Suga and Kuroo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : implied prior abuse
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> okayokayokayokay i want angst and sorry if this is to triggering but would u be able to do yams,tsukki, suga and kurro where they get in a super heated fight w their s/o and the boys do a quick movement to run their hands through their hair or do a hand gesture and its so fast their s/o thinks theyre going to hit them and they heavily flinch and then the guys find out shes had some sort of abusive past (doesn't have to be extreme extreme ur choice)  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: So, this is an absolute monster of a post. I was actually struggling a lot with learning how to fit a lot into very small chunks, so I experimented with some POV and style changes. I also added your Kageyama and Akaashi request in here too. I hope you like it, and I’m sorry for the wait!_

Sometimes the things you said really stung, but Yamaguchi could take it. He knew that you didn’t mean them at him, you didn’t mean exactly what you said ever, and the times that you came back, your face blotchy from tears, telling him that you were sorry for saying something like that… well, that touched him far more than he’d ever admit. This time however, it was a matter of your safety; walking around at night alone, especially a high school girl, that was just asking for trouble. Call him paranoid, but this wasn’t something he was going to compromise with. Ever.

“I’m a guy, ____, it’s not a problem for me even if it were two in the morning, but do you know how worried I was about you? You’re-”

“-Not a kid! I’m not going to ask for a guardian to come pick me up from school every time I need to stay late somewhere!”

By the time he registered that your eyes had widened unnaturally and you had flinched away from him so violently it put you a foot’s worth of extra space between you two, it was too late. Yamaguchi’s hand fell swiftly from his hair and he reached out towards you in puzzlement. He didn’t expect you to stare at the appendage like it was a knife, and after two seconds of hesitation and shaking, your weak knees gave way and the tears were pouring out freely as you sat, trembling on the ground.

“W-what… ___, did I do something wrong? Please,” he made a move to sit next to you, but he remembered how you had cowered at his hand, and decided to keep some distance. With dismay, all he could do was watch, unable to touch and comfort you, to bury your face into his chest and apologize for making you cry like he broke you. It was a good five minutes of silence and your quiet sobs before your arms reached for him. He knelt down and wrapped his arms around you tightly, almost binding you in place and letting you keep your head bowed down.

Quietly, through stilted breaths, the first thing you did was apologize. Yamaguchi’s eyes closed and his lips echoed your trembling ‘sorry’ as he sat and listened to you. It surprised you, his hand in his hair so suddenly like it had been raised years ago, ready to hurt you like it was its purpose. The hurt on his face- the confusion, that was what made you cry, because if there was one thing you were scared of the most, would be letting what hurt you in the past, hurt Yamaguchi. You said sorry again and again after that, and as always, Yamaguchi forgave you and held the two of you together until the storm passed.

 

* * *

 

It was common knowledge that Tsukishima was not an easy person to get along with, but despite his prickly disposition he actually treated his calm and bashful girlfriend with an unnatural gentleness. It was the butt of a lot of teasing whenever you would show up for practice to cheer him on, and even then, you’ve never seen him raise his voice at any of his teammates. Which was what made this argument all the more out of character, all the more frightening.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped. You two were in an empty hallway at school after hours and the walls seemed to echo his harsh voice repeatedly until that was the only thing you could register.

“…Do you not want me to look at you at all, Tsukishima-kun?” Because that’s what you’ve been acting like all week, your unsent sentiments spilling across your features like a burst dam. He never gave you a reason for his sudden distance, but every time your spirits lifted when you found time to spend with him, his soured, and always had an excuse to leave again.

He tugged at the roots of his hair as he spoke,“jeez, why are all girls so sensitive…?”, but the sentence tapered off into a question as he watched you flinch as if someone had slapped you.

Unfortunately Tsukishima was the ‘believe in information’ kind of guy, had absolutely shitty intuition when it came to girls. Therefore, at your sudden response, he narrowed his eyes suspiciously and swiped his left hand into the air to match his right.

This one knocked the breath out of you. It was so much more purposeful, so much more firm and it was too late for words to even tumble out because your eyes were already blurry with unbidden tears.

“S-Stupid Tsu-” was as far as you made it till strong, strong arms had your head cradled against a chest and you knew that he knew. You could feel his cheek against your hair, his fingers threading through the fine strands as comfortingly as they could manage.

“I’m sorry.”

It was gentle, muffled and also ashamed. Despite everything, you smiled a little into his shoulder, blinking away what you could of the tears, and nodded. You forgave him, of course you would. Even if he did it again as some stupid experiment, there was nothing in you that could possibly stay upset at him for something that he was now trying so hard to soothe you from. There were still a lot of things unresolved between the two of you, but right now, the two of you simply in each other’s arms, his understanding and comfort seemed to be the only thing you’ll ever need.

 

* * *

 

Suga was just having a really bad day. It was those days where you think you could get through small inconveniences within the hour or so, but it just keeps on piling up. One difficulty after another, one annoyance after another. Then there was his mom getting sick, which rendered him chained to her side for the weekend. Suga was Suga, anyone could tell that the person with the biggest heart would be the most concerned about his family. You had brought up visiting his mom with him, but he had exploded with uncharacteristic rage. He was cracking under pressure, and it had only taken one good word on Daichi’s behalf that had him set off on you.

“I thought I knew you better, ____. Do you really think that was a good call?!”

“You didn’t even give him the benefit of the doubt!”

Your voices were slowly escalating in volume, and somewhere in the back of your mind you were surprised at how nobody in the nearby vicinity had complained about the noise or called the police. Suga’s facial expressions were getting more frantic by the second, his eyes boring disappointed holes into your soul and your face was flushed with indignation. This wasn’t even your fault, you had nothing to do with it, and he was going off on you for staying rational? You told him so, your voice bouncing off the walls as you yelled right back.

You were sure it wasn’t on purpose, but you felt yourself freeze. The sound of Suga’s fury was barely reaching your ears anymore as you followed the violent upwards flick of his wrist, gesturing towards your head. In a split second your eyes had smashed shut, and your head was twisted defensively towards the crook of your neck. It was a reaction that had been ingrained into you, and you realized what you had done when Suga’s shocked gasp brought you back to your senses. He looked torn between staring staring at his hand with increasing horror, and staring you with increasing regret, and it took you several seconds to steady your breath before moving forwards. You covered his hands with your own.

“You… you’re not supposed to be more composed than I am,” he stammered, “why… why didn’t you tell me? I almost just… I made you think…”

“It’s okay,” you whispered, a tentative, shaky smile on your face as you moved closer to wrap your arms around his body instead, “I just… there was never a right time. You didn’t do anything wrong, I should have told you earlier.”

Truthfully, seeing Suga so distraught over a gesture that you should have let go of by now hurt more than if anything actually happened. You held him a little tighter as he slowly put his arms around you too, and you felt the strain melt away from your body again. It was a bad day, but it could have been worse. There were more important things to be worrying about, and you were glad that in the end, this brought the two of you much closer than before.

You whispered a quiet ‘I love you’ into his collarbone, and the way he squeezed you back in response let you know that his brilliant smile was back once again where it belonged.

 

* * *

 

You slammed the door behind you as you stormed inside the apartment. Kuroo’s footsteps were loud and audible in the corridor behind as he chased you, fumbling with the lock a bit and cussing underneath his breath as he finally managed to wrestle the door open. If he had any sense at all, your boyfriend would take the hint and leave you alone, but no, he was stubborn as a mule and you were ready for battle. The smile on your face was bitter and smug at the same time when the pillow connected with Kuroo’s face hard enough to knock him back a few steps.

“Hey- calm down!” for a second there he looked like he wanted to throw the pillow right back at you, but refrained with the utmost effort, “look, I told you it was nothing- it was literally a walk because she was alone and-”

“Then why did you lie,” you hissed, your hands curled up into a tight fist by your sides, “what’s so terrible that you had to hide if all it was, was a walk? Did you even think for a second?”

“Because I thought you’d be angry! Taking a girl home at the dead of night isn’t something that looks good on me you know?”

Of course you fucking knew. That was precisely why you were so incredibly irritated and upset in equal measure. He didn’t trust or believe in you enough to tell you what he was doing. You thought he knew you better, but at this rate, it looked like you were just hoping on your own.

“You don’t get it do you? If you think I’m just being jealous, then so be it!”

“For fuck’s sake-” the moment Kuroo raised his arm to hurl that pillow back onto the sofa, you felt your whole body flinch. The slam of the pillow against the sofa morphed in your mind, and all you ended up registering was the resounding thunk of ten years ago as your father had held onto your hair and smashed your face against the wardrobe door while he beat you.

You didn’t know what your expression was like, but you wagered it was probably bad enough that Kuroo had lapsed into complete silence. Nothing moved for several heartbeats, until you felt your eyes starting to burn, and hot tears beginning to slip down the sides of your cheeks. In an instance, Kuroo had narrowed the gap between you two and the way he lifted his hands to cradle your face was the most delicate and heartbroken thing you had ever seen him do.

The slow tears made way for the heavy sobs that began to force their way out of your throat, drowning out Kuroo’s broken ‘I’m so sorry’s he whispered against your lips. It had been a dreadful day, and the room was otherwise silent save for the sounds of two damaged people trying to fix each other the only way they knew how.

 

* * *

 

“That’s wrong. I taught you how to angle your hand last week.”

Kageyama was a bit taken aback by how your brows furrowed immediately after he said that. He didn’t see how it was his fault that you forgot, and since you were asking for his help with volleyball it was only fitting that you actually practiced in your spare time.

“Try it again,” he nodded his head at you. Obediently, you threw the ball back up in the air and tried the serve again. This time was worse than the last, and it definitely showed on Kageyama’s face.

“No. Again.”

You let out a loud sigh and wiped the sweat off your brow clumsily with your arm.

“I need a break, Tobio.”

He watched with narrowed eyes as you made your way towards your bags and plopped down. He didn’t understand you, not when it came to volleyball. You seemed so determined when you came to him for some tips about serve aces, and you were agreeable enough when he decided to coach you on weekends. Right now, it seemed like you couldn’t care less, and it frustrated him. Was he just imagining your enthusiasm then?

Slowly, he picked up the ball from the other side of the court and walked up to you.

“If you’re not going to take it seriously, then there’s no point in me teaching you,” he spoke.

You paused, and Kageyama waited.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” came the reply. It was curt and had undertones of anger, and Kageyama honestly thought if anyone was to be angry, it should be him.

“Then don’t act like that,” he retorted.

This was always how it started. Him saying something, and you getting mad. He didn’t understand why you seemed to find him so hurtful, but seeing you getting riled up over seemingly nothing- that hurt him too. It was late enough at night that nobody was around anymore, and your exchange got louder and louder until it was yelling, two people furious and hackles raised around each other.

If he didn’t know why you were mad at him for just speaking, he certainly didn’t understand when you suddenly gasped and turned your face so abruptly to the side. At least, he didn’t, until he realized that he was gesticulating so heatedly that his palm was raised at an angle that even he realized looked like was about to hit her. Immediately, he pulled his arms back to his sides, rigid, and his eyes as wide the moon.

“I’m… I’m really sorry,” he whispered, feeling as ashamed as he was unsure, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No,” your voice was wavering, “please don’t do it again.”

Kageyama realized he had been doing a terrible job at giving affection as he walked more than willingly into your outstretched arms as your way of asking for comfort. You were both still stiff, unused to this sudden amount of public affection, but still he held you as closely as possible, hoping that at the very least, he could protect you from some of your own ghosts with his silent and constant devotion to you.

 

* * *

 

More than often, people comment on how you two were alike. Akaashi wasn’t the type to give in to impulses or spontaneous affection, and neither was his girlfriend. They were a pair of beautiful, untouchable sculptures, cold to the naked eye. True, they could be cold, but personally, Akaashi thought that they just didn’t understand his girlfriend. Today was one of those days, as he walked purposely to his next class until he was stopped by the sight of you and Bokuto together by the water fountain. He couldn’t hear what either of you were saying, but something definitely stung as he watched you smile that smile he thought only he ever saw, at Bokuto. That was definitely not untouchable, and not at all sculpture-like.

The rest of the day remained foul for him then. You were there waiting for him by the shoe lockers as usual, but the walk home was silent. Akaashi was about to let you turn around to walk into your house when he caught your wrist and he blurted,

“You smiled at Bokuto today.”

Your head was tilted in confusion and you nodded. “I did,” you replied, “he said something funny.”

“I thought that… was our smile, the way your eyes light up and everything.” Some part of him knew that it was really, really silly of him to make such a big fuss over this, but he didn’t think he’d be able to even sleep tonight without it plaguing him.

“Keiji, I can’t just not smile at people,” you answered, “I don’t know what you’re making such a big fuss about.”

“Is Bokuto-san easier to be with than I am?”

“That’s not what I said at all-”

“-Don’t worry about it, forget I said anything,” Akaashi shook his head and threw up his hands in frustration. The moment he did though, you had recoiled from him and your hand had popped up in a gesture for him to stay away. There was a stunned silence as he stared at you, and you stared at your own reaction, a slight mixture of shock and growing fear.

Akaashi had read about this in articles, and it only took him a split second before he had realized what it meant for you. For the first time ever, despite the fact that you were in a pose that screamed ‘stay away’, he pushed past your arm, laced his fingers through yours and hugged you to him with all the tenderness he could muster.

The two of you usually conversed only in soft looks and private murmurs, but tonight, he could feel your apprehension and gratefulness through the beating of your heart against his. It didn’t matter if you didn’t want to talk about it, or that you felt guilty for reacting in such a way. He was there for you regardless for as long as it took, and you heard it spoken out loud to you with his own answering heartbeat.


	4. Bodyguard AU with Iwaizumi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Explicit content
> 
> Prompt by haikyuties:
>
>>   
>  well here's a plot for you. i'm a sucker for royal aus. ;) “i’m a prince/ss and you’re my bodyguard and we’re so not supposed to bang but we kind of did anyways” au if possible, could you do this with iwaizumi and a fem! s/o?  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: There was what I knew would be good for a scenario blog, then there was what my hands decided I would write. I have nothing else to say except for a shameful ‘this is nowhere near a scenario, but a bona fide fic’. (I’m also willing to exchange this for an actual smut scenario instead of some sappy love making that I ended up writing instead.) Thank you for your support since the very start, and thank you again for being so patient! I hope you enjoy!_

“Mooooorning, Hajime-kun!” It was a bright new day; the sun was shining, the birds were chirping and once again Iwaizumi found himself standing awkwardly with his arms outstretched, welcoming the embrace of an overly happy princess. He was telling the truth when he said that it was with absolute reluctance that he patted her on the back in return.

“See?” She grinned cheekily up at him and hopped back out of his personal space again, “that wasn’t so bad was it?”

“It’s eight in the morning your highness,” Iwaizumi could feel his growing headache already giving birth to another headache, “at least give me some time to grab my coffee before you resume your mission to seduce me.”

His only response was an unrepentant shrug and a flash of glinting eyes that promised more pain throughout the day. Well, at least he escaped for now, and the pantry down the hall was his literal salvation at the moment.

Usually, bodyguards don’t try to weasel their way out of their charge’s presence. Iwaizumi was an excellent bodyguard, the top of his skill bracket, but while he was built to take on hired guns and assassins, there was nothing in his training about defending himself from persistent,  _overly amorous_  members of the royal family. It was only his second week on this assignment, but he had enough material to write his magnum opus.

He had to give her props for her sheer persistence. Day one through three involved an unnatural amount of staring, blatant ogling, and small flashes of deviousness that should have warned Iwaizumi about his fate. Day three through seven consisted of a large compilation of cheeky winks, sly smirks, stray fingers hovering over basically any skin that Iwaizumi had exposed and also a  _lot_  of whispering into his ear. Shame was not a word to be found in her dictionary, and neither was ‘giving up’. If it were anyone else, Iwaizumi would have thought that it was actually rather endearing, this amount of bullheadedness in the face of definite failure. However, he liked his job, and so did his mortgage. Any whiff of an intimate relationship  with his charge would definitely be enough to send his ass flying into filing for the next three years of his probation.

Well, with his third cup of coffee drained, there weren’t any more excuses for him to ditch the princess. He stepped out into the still empty corridor and calmly made his way down the longest route through the castle. This was how he caught up with her usually, just by walking alone she would utilize her inner sneak radar or something to pop out from a corner and bother him some more.

“I can hear your breathing,” he commented idly, “gotta do better than that.”

A small pout met his criticism and true to habit, she emerged from behind one of the pillars facing the main courtyard. Still, he could see the amusement in her eyes and he felt his lips twitch upwards to mirror that contagious good mood. Despite all his complaining, she still got under his skin like no other; he didn’t think that his facial muscles remembered how to smile until she came along and made him smile  _all the time_.

He cocked his head to the side expectantly and hooked his fingers on the pockets of his slacks. “What will it be today, your highness? More massages? Or did you want me to accompany you to the store again?”

“Hmmm, how about not calling me ‘your highness’?”

“No can do.”

“Boooo,” she stuck her tongue out at him. She had taken a few steps closer, and Iwaizumi could smell the faint scent of lemon from her freshly laundered clothes. “I didn’t want you to ‘accompany me to the store’ that one time, it was supposed to be a date!”

He had to smile a little at that. “Alright, it was a date. A date where I was your clothes-hanger.”

She gave a short laugh, the sound rich and confident, nothing like the image everyone else saw of her. If there was one thing she disliked, it was probably wind-chimes, so it was a good thing her voice didn’t sound anything like them.

“Fine then,” she leveled a finger at him imperiously, “after my duties, you’re going to watch a movie with me. As a date, and don’t cop out and guard the door like last time.”

He knew that the following five minutes of declining would amount to nothing anyway, so screw decorum. With a small, fond shake of his head, he watched her march towards her study and he followed her in obedient silence.

 

* * *

 

If there was one thing he trusted her in, it was her taste in movies. Iwaizumi was pretty sure that he was working for a man in this regard, and boy was he glad. The Notebook twice was quite enough for him. Sneaking a quick glance, he propped his head up on his left arm and allowed himself, in the comforting darkness of the private cinema, to watch the princess instead. He watched as her lashes fluttered with each flash of light, her lips turned up into a perpetual grin, her fingers wrapped into a tension-filled fist and her gaze, following each onscreen movement with such fascination that Iwaizumi… missed, as it was usually on him.

“Are you even watching, Hajime-kun?” he broke his silent reverie at the tap of her fingers against his forehead. “If you just wanted to stare at me, we could have done that somewhere with more lighting.”

He leaned back and waved a hand dismissively. “Just carefully watching over my charge, your highness.”

“Is that so?” This tone of voice he recognized was not much different than that of a hunter. The princess watched him with a wicked glint in her eye and she leaned over to him, half his body already supporting her weight. He could feel the warmth of her breath grow against his cheek, and in a moment of weakness, his hands froze at her waist, refusing to push her off completely.

Her lips were far too close.  _She_  was far too close, but his body wasn’t even sure whether or not it wanted her exactly where she was, or to move away as quickly as possible-

“I thought movies involved watching the screen, not quite so much each other.” A sharp voice sliced through any remnants of tension in the air. This was definitely not a voice they expected. Both Iwaizumi and the princess shared a moment of realization and slowly turned with abject horror towards the piercing eyes of the Queen Regent herself. Iwaizumi tried to speak, he really did. However the princess was beginning to shake in his grip, and it was a thousand times harder than it sounded to come up with an explanation in the face of someone whose folded arms looked like they held the judgement of God.

Apparently, he took too long. In the midst of their daze, the princess tore herself out of her seat in one jagged motion and all Iwaizumi could do was watch as she threw herself over the remaining chairs with practiced swiftness and escaped through the back door. Struck dumb, he could still feel the unwavering gaze of Her Majesty burning into his skin and slowly, he made eye contact with her.

Her sigh was a heavy one, and it surprised him to his toes when he heard something much different than what he was expecting. “Go after her, Iwaizumi. It’s raining outside.”

It was a command that brooked no objection, and one that he didn’t need to be told twice to jump into action for. The issue wasn’t anywhere near addressed, but for now, he had permission to be there for the princess as not a bodyguard, but a companion.

It was a good ten minutes of running before he found her. The drizzle had grown into a downpour, and she was curled up underneath the alcove in the private gardens, shivering in probably what was more humiliation than the cold.

Carefully, he covered her with his jacket and drew her close, rubbing at her arms.

“You’re the temperature of the marble bench, your highness. I can’t protect you from pneumonia.”

For the first time since he started working in the palace, the princess was completely silent. There wasn’t a sound that escaped her lips, but she did turn her head to look at Iwaizumi, and the intensity of that stare… it held him hostage in his position, a surge of longing shooting through his chest. He decided right then and there that if she could take his breath away with a simple glance, then come hell or high water, he sure as hell wasn’t going to lose.

Their mouths slotted together like jigsaw pieces, leaving no room for neither shyness nor second thoughts. Her hands snaked up his sides to lock together around his waist, and he returned the gesture, cradling her face with reverent wonder and shameless affection. Carefully, he shifted them both up from the ground onto the bench, making sure to keep her on his lap so that he would take the brunt of the chilly marble.

In a distant part of his mind, he pondered the fact that this was probably not how the princess planned for the fruit of her efforts to unfurl. Nonetheless, he gripped her tighter, leaving harsh imprints on her skin as if the material of her jeans didn’t exist. The slick movement of his tongue against hers prompted a small whimper, and he kissed her even harder, with more fervour, as if passing on his want for her through sheer passion. Her wet hair was still soft against his skin when he pulled away from her roughly and instead latched onto her neck, nipping and sucking at whichever patch of skin he could reach. He could feel her warming up, the small curve of her back arching into him more with each lap of his tongue. Her legs were wrapped around his waist now and each shallow breath he could hear from her brought him closer and closer to his threshold.

Her soft moan was all he needed for his self restraint to snap. He bit mercilessly into the soft skin below her clavicle, and smoothed the throbbing red mark with harsh licks of his tongue. The buttons on her shirt gave zero resistance as they practically slipped undone at Iwaizumi’s rough tugs and the instant they did, his lips slid lower to continue their worship. Her heartbeat betrayed her smile as she rested her cheek against his hair, growing hotter with each kiss, each lick against her goosebumped skin. Her arms were around his neck now, fixing them close together, and Iwaizumi felt his arousal sear him from the inside when he heard the hitch of her breath.

There was no resistance when his hand began to wander closer and closer to the seam of her jeans, and with almost frightening familiarity, he undid the button and slipped them down to her knees. Quivering fingers paused at her front, continuing only when permission was forcefully given in the form of a sharp tug of his hair and a tongue wrestling against his. What would be wetness from the downpour turned warm against his ministrations, alternating between gentle massaging of her nub and tracing figure of eights against her entrance. He could feel her squirm above him, biting at his lower lip whenever he pressed harder, and he felt his own lips curl up into a ghost of a smile when she gave a final jolt against the palm of his hand. Her wanton moan against his frantic pulse would plague his dreams for nights to come, and it traveled straight down to his own hardness.

Satisfied with his progress, he was about to pull away to give them some time to recover, but before he could even shift his wrist was stopped with a firm hand. His half-lidded eyes opened out of surprise, and they were greeted with the sight of her gazing into his soul with the same intensity as when they first kissed. Iwaizumi wasn’t sure whether or not he felt like laughing or kissing her senseless when she waved a small silver packet in between their faces.

 _Of course she’d be prepared_ , he pressed his amusement and fondness for her through their lips. Once again he held her securely against him, his hands twitching involuntarily as he let her take control and wordlessly slipped the protection onto him. Both of them were more than ready when he finally slipped inside her. Iwaizumi watched with wide eyes and a lax mouth as his princess fit him inside her in his entirety, hips rocking gently against him in an attempt to create some more friction between them. Further prompting was not required; he sped up his pace from a gentle thrusting to aching, deep thrusts into her and for a second when her blunt nails scraped desperately against his back, he thought this was what heaven must be like. Their faces were pressed against each other, slick from both the rain and their sweat and what a sight they must have made: two bodies flush together with such abandon, their passion almost visibly steaming in the chill of the storm. Their climax reached its peak almost simultaneously, her contraction around him ruthless and intimate, drawing out any remnants of pleasure from him that hadn’t already been pressed into her skin.

There they sat for what remained of their rush, silent save for their smiles that shone with exhilaration and tenderness, and the steady pattering of rain around them.

 

* * *

 

Iwaizumi spent the rest of the night keeping vigil beside her. After cleaning themselves up, the adrenaline could no longer save his princess from the onslaught of exhaustion and cold, so when she inevitably passed out in his arms, he had carried her swiftly to her bed and tucked her in.

“I feel like shit,” was the first thing she said to him the next morning. He looked up from his book and leaned forwards in his seat to replace the wet cloth that he had placed on her forehead sometime during the night.

“You have a fever,” he replied dispassionately, “that’s what happens when morons decide to sit in the rain.”

The only response he received for that was a two fingered salute and a beautiful smile on her face. “We did more than sit in the rain. I made you lose.”

“It was a game, was it?”

“Maybe,” she eyed him steadily, “and if mother let you go after me, it appears that I might have won a small battle elsewhere too.”

Iwaizumi felt his gaze soften a little at her admission. A small smile tugged at his lips yet again as he covered the hand on the bed with one of his own. There were going to be more battles to be fought, but in that moment he believed in her happiness, and confessed that perhaps, the hardest battle had already been won the first time she had made him smile. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Dubious consent, safe words.
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
>  could you do a scenario with tsukki, kuroo, akaashi and terushima (if you do him if not maybe kages? or whoever you think the scenario would work with) where they're doing the do with their s/o and she says the safe word if they have one but the guys are too into it so they don't really hear her so she has to like full on tell them to stop and then they comfort her afterwards or smthn or angsty fluff or s o m e th i n g  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Another supremely wordy post! I was the most reluctant to write Akaashi’s, but it turned out to be my favourite. Also, I didn’t think that everyone would think or need to have a safe word (although there are some really dumb ones), so I adjusted the scene accordingly. An alternative title would be ‘the thing where everyone says ‘shit’’. I hope you enjoy!_

It started off gentle, like most of their evenings. The thing about being in university plus on a volleyball team was that  **Tsukishima** would always come home exhausted.  ****Today, he had come back with the usual sag in his posture, but it was his thunderous expression that had you jump out of your seat and drag him into bed with some netflix to calm down. However, not ten minutes later, you found yourself being pushed face-first into the mattress, laptop completely abandoned and Tsukishima’s calloused fingers gripping your waist so hard you could feel the bruises blooming.

The quick breaths you took did nothing to soothe your shaking. Your knees were starting to wobble and each thrust from behind felt like Tsukishima was trying to break you apart from the inside. It… had never been like that before, because he was always so incredibly attentive when he was intimate, but this man was literally fucking his anger into you, ruthlessly and without consideration.

Your cheeks began to chafe against the sheets, your arms had stopped supporting your upper body long ago and you could feel the terror bubbling up your throat. You tried slapping the empty side of the bed with your hand, but it wasn’t clear whether Tsukishima had ignored you or had taken it as encouragement. The pain from hitting your cervix was starting to tear your composure to ribbons; in one final attempt at stopping you kicked your left leg up desperately, jolting Tsukishima out of his furious abandon as your heel connected solidly with his side. 

“I…”

You curled up around a spare pillow, wincing at the soreness from your behind and tried to think of happy things. Something other than the stunned man staring at you as if he had broken something fragile.

“I’m sorry.” It came out as a whisper, and he shifted closer. “I don’t know what came over me, it had just been a long day and I shouldn’t have taken that out on you like that, not like this…” His voice cracked, and you looked up.

His hands on your shoulders were so frighteningly gentle, and they smoothed small circles into your skin where he was afraid to touch for long. You felt your breath catch in your throat at the sight of his gaze- it was so raw, so incredibly vulnerable and it felt like the accumulation of  everything Tsukishima would never say out loud. In that one moment, you knew that this would never happen again, because it would hurt him far more than it had hurt you. Silently, you moved to rest on you knees and placed your hand over his.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, this time resting his forehead against yours. He was closer now, and you could feel the tension drain from his frame when he noticed your small smile against his cheek. You both knew that it wasn’t a smile of happiness, but a soundless  _I forgive you_. He took it for all it was worth, letting it wash over him like a wave to soothe away his self loathing in that moment.

“Why is it every time you do something wrong, it always ends up like this,” you mused. Tsukishima said nothing, but hugged you tighter now that he knew it was okay to have you close again. “You always end up feeling so bad that I end up comforting you instead.”

“It’s all planned,” he replied into your shoulder.

“Okay,” you sighed, “then your plans are terrible.”

“Mmmm,” Tsukishima peered up at you and for a second you were a little taken aback by the calculating affection lingering in them. Before you knew it, he had slid off the bed and was pulling you up with him by the wrist. “I have another.”

“What is it?”

He leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to your lips, sending a strong ache through your chest. You clutched at it with your free hand.

“Want to share some of the cake I brought home?”

 

* * *

 

 

You had been the one to leap into **Kuroo** 's arms first, and he had brightened up like the sun and swung you around like a five year old. It had been about a week since Kuroo had left for his training camp (“during Spring Break?” you had whined, but alas, they didn’t give weeks off for sports anymore during university) and you weren’t sure how much you could take his sexual frustration in text form anymore. Now he was back, and it hadn’t taken long before that joyous beam on his face had twisted into something more sly and within minutes, had somehow managed to divest the both of you from your clothing.

The marble counter that he had hoisted you on had long grown warm from the friction. His knuckles were white from how hard he was gripping either side of you as you both rocked in tandem against each other. His eagerness betrayed how much he had missed this, how badly he wanted you, and you held onto him with equal dedication. You dragged a small hand through his hair, and he gave a small whine, hips snapping harder into yours.

Unfortunately, that movement pushed you further backwards, and in the back of your mind you heard something fall, and then a growing discomfort near to the right side of your waist. Kuroo however, paid it no mind, his mind permanently lost in the feeling, scent and sound of you. It was only when the dull discomfort began to feel like it was starting to bruise your skin that you tapped him on the shoulder.

“Ass bandits, Testu,” you groaned into his ear, “something hurts.”

His pace didn’t falter at all, and you wondered if he actually heard you. You tried again.

“Testu! Ass bandits!”

By now it felt like someone was rubbing salt into a wound. You could feel the pain licking at your bones with how much you were being shoved against it repetitively, and becoming a little afraid and how Kuroo just wasn’t stopping, you resorted to smacking your boyfriend upside the head. “Don’t ignore the safe word, you idiot!”

‘Wha-?” He stopped and immediately let go of you, a cloud of confusion glazing over his eyes. You immediately loosened his grip around you and turned to gingerly press against the deep bruise that had formed at your side.

“Oh  _shit_ ,” Kuroo muttered, and his hands joined yours instantly, caressing the purple skin as gently as he could.

You stopped your ministrations and watched him fret for a few moments. “You know,” you said accusingly, “there’s not point in having a safe word if you don’t listen to it.”

“I know, I know,” he grimaced, “I was just so into it and it’s been a while so I sort of blocked out everything.” He broke off to look at your carefully. You weren’t sure what kind of expression you had on, but whatever it was, it made Kuroo place his free hand over your cheek and murmur apologies into your skin. “Did I scare you?”

“A little,” you admitted, refusing to relax.

“I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful next time.” He hooked his arm underneath your knees and swept you up clumsily.

The two of you settled into the couch without much protest and he held you close, keeping a protective arm around your waist. It was much more comfortable than the kitchen counter, and you could feel the guilt and worry through Kuroo’s stare and the way his hands flitted over your body as if soothing a frightened child. Although your relationship with him was mostly full of lame jokes and careless laughter, this felt closer to the core of your bond- a delicate dance around each other and a promise of doing better no matter what. You allowed yourself a small smile as you felt him move to rub your new injury tenderly, and decided that as long as this didn’t happen again, it wasn’t so bad to have him pamper you for a bit after all.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t the first time you two had tried this sort of play. Both you and  **Akaashi** were naturally quiet people, so it was only normal that the both of you sought out different methods of expressing yourselves through intimacy. This evening you and Akaashi had decided on experimenting with a small gag and blindfold. Nothing too far fetched, just something to break the rigidity from being out with people all day.

Akaashi rather enjoyed the time that he had with you to do these things. It was such a release to be out of his comfort zone, and, as he ran a long finger down your torso while thrusting shallowly into you, he was a man after all, and he had his kinks that even his closest friends wouldn’t have guessed of him.

However, while he was on top of you, he didn’t seem to notice that his thrusts were starting to get more frenzied, harsher, and half of your face was being forcefully pushed into the mattress. It was getting harder to breathe, and the feeling of being so restricted was starting to feel incredibly claustrophobic. The gag made it harder for you to speak, but you tried anyway, your tongue wrapping around a muffled “indigo”.

There was no response, save for a low groan from the back of his throat. You tried again and again, each time more difficult that the one before as the gag stuck to your lips from the saliva. It felt like it was never going to stop, and you were trapped there in darkness and silence, and this time your plead was a shout.

“Indigo!” you cried, and your lungs immediately started drawing breath again when you felt Akaashi freeze above you and a silken hand pulling away at your gag altogether.

“ _Shit_ ,” was the first thing you heard. You didn’t realize you had started tearing up until Akaashi wiped them away for you with a warm thumb, and without caring that you were still blind, you threw yourself upwards and into his arms.

You could have said something, but words eluded you, choosing instead to steady your trembling with his embrace. His fingers were trembling too, but they bravely threaded through your hair as he soothed you, stroking your back in muted apology. Everything about Akaashi screamed that he was sorry, the way his back curved over you, the way he buried his tight frown against your temple.

“It’s okay,” you finally breathed out, “it’s okay.”

“Is it?” came the disbelieving reply, “I could have really hurt you then. What’s the point of having a safe word when I can’t even hear it?”

“Maybe we should have thought about that before we used the gag,” you joked weakly. He didn’t share the sentiment with you, but you could tell the attempt worked when the tight lines of his shoulderblades softened into a more relaxed posture.

“Don’t be silly,” Akaashi sat up straighter and cupped your face with both his hands, “I should be comforting you, not the other way around. Come,” he commanded softly. You slipped on his discarded shirt and took his hand without protest.

He guided you out onto the sofa and you waited patiently for him there. He returned quickly with a tub of pistachio ice cream, two wooden spoons and a stuffed figure of winnie the pooh, which he tucked soundly underneath your left arm. Wordlessly, he slipped into place behind you, supporting your back, and the both of you dug into the ice cream in appreciative and apologetic silence.

“Would you like to watch a movie instead?” Akaashi asked soothingly.

A lot of the tension and stress from earlier had been lifted off your shoulders so you shook your head, eyes closed and without rush.

“I’m okay,” you murmured, sinking comfortably into his cradling arms, “this is okay.”

Akaashi didn’t reply. Instead, he hummed lowly and closed his own eyes, continuing to run his fingers through your hair. You were right, this was going to be okay.

 

* * *

 

 

“Heeeey, I’m home!”  **Terushima**  was always loud when he came home, and you ambled your way out of the bedroom, welcoming him home with a small, tired smile on your face. He didn’t seem to notice though, as he tossed his sports bag into a corner and swept you up into an one-armed hug as he tapped on his phone.

You watched it wearily. “Still playing that game?”

“Yeah,” he answered absentmindedly, “about to beat a level, so hang on.” You stood there for a good minute, waiting for him to finish tapping. When he did, you felt a little bit disappointed at the fact that he still hadn’t really looked at you. You allowed yourself to be manhandled as he snuggled into you a little bit, still restlessly, until all of a sudden you were pressed against the front door, his hands all over you, tugging down your sweatpants and biting into your neck in ways that were more pain than pleasure.

His fingers were getting closer and closer to your entrance, and the sudden surge of reluctance to be touched like that prompted you to squeeze your legs closed and you quietly murmured for him to stop. There was no response to indicate that he had heard you at all, and you felt his fingers dive into you with uncomfortable roughness. You tried again, this time with the safe word.

“ _Ice ice baby_ ,” you breathed out with a little laughter and a lot of embarrassment, trying to sound more confident than you felt, “c’mon, Teru-  _argh_!”

His nails had accidentally scratched you with how harshly he was moving, and you realized that you really, really wanted to stop. It wasn’t fun anymore, you were too tired for this, and he hadn’t even looked at you once to see how much you hated being there right then and there.

“Ice ice baby,” you repeated, this time with much more desperation. The fingers continued moving, his face was still buried into the crook of your neck, and you were just so violated and so done. He dropped you immediately with a loud wince when you slammed your elbow into the side of his head.

He was finally looking at you, at least. The change from confusion to slight horror and discomfort was visible on his face. You could tell he was lost, torn between bringing you closer to him and keeping you away from him.

“Did I just…? I didn’t know…” he started, begging for your forgiveness through his voice, “shit, I didn’t mean it.”

“Yeah,” you pulled your pants back on, and threw him a dirty look, “you didn’t even ask.”

He was the one who walked away first, throwing himself onto the sofa and dropping his head in in hands. You left him to it, and made your way to your bedroom. As angry as you were, you knew that Terushima would feel ten times the amount of guilt and disgust for himself. No matter how wild and spontaneous the both of you could be, you knew he took consent seriously, so today… really shook you a little. Almost like you couldn’t believe it had happened, with how tired you were. Gah, you didn’t know anymore. You fell onto the bed, one arm covering your eyes and decided that it was just a good idea all round to sleep some of the shock away.

Thirty minutes later, you woke up to the sound of someone shuffling outside your door before leaving. Blearily you rubbed at your swollen eyes, and picked up the small letter that Terushima had apparently slipped under the door for you. It had a small sad chibi on the front of it, and was written with what looked like his sister’s stationery set.

_I’m an idiot. I’m sorry I scared you and didn’t stop.  
_ _You don’t have to come out until you’re okay with being around me. You can hit me as hard as you can, and I promise that I won’t do that again.  
_ _I made some pancakes for you, they’re outside your door. You looked tired, so maybe they’ll give you some energy.  
_ _I miss your smile!_

He was such a cheesy moron sometimes. You opened your door and stared at the full meal sitting outside your door and you knew that you couldn’t be angry at him for long, not if he was this upset with himself. Still, you smiled a little, it wouldn’t be too bad if you could keep getting such VIP treatment in the meanwhile.

 

* * *

 

 

It was still better than the first time, but the anxiousness prickling at the tips of both your fingers was almost tangible as you and  **Kageyama**  shifted into position. There was less shaking, fewer awkward smiles, but you weren’t sure which you preferred as you eyed your boyfriend’s stern expression with a little bit of worry. Neither of you had done this before each other, so there was a lot of guesswork and trial and error, but what happened the first time was more than just bad luck, it was pretty much a disaster.

“Are you ready, Kageyama-kun?” You kept your tone light, hoping to relax him a little bit more, but honestly you were just as nervous as he looked.

He gave you a stiff nod in response, and you couldn’t help but feel like he had his mind somewhere else, focused on something he wasn’t going to tell you anytime soon. You could feel his fingers reaching down your bare stomach and without warning, he slid inside you. You yelped from the sudden invasion, but you let him continue, unsure of whether or not he knew what he was doing. You most certainly didn’t, and Kageyama looked like he was counting in his head, staring at you like some kind of timer.

“W-wait,” you interjected, “i-it’s starting to hurt.” The thrusts were getting deeper and deeper, and you were so unprepared for this that you could feel your insides cramping at the sensation. Kageyama however, didn’t stop. He was still staring straight through you, brows furrowed with focus and you were starting to panic. Was this what it was actually supposed to feel like? Kageyama looked like he knew what he was doing, but it felt so much worse. Biting your lip defiantly, you buried those sentiments as deep as they could go and bore through the sensations with your body wound as tightly as possible. Until- all the pain suddenly stopped, and Kageyama was slipping out of you, a hand cupping your face and looking incredibly concerned.

“What’s wrong?” It was a brusque, abrupt question, and your eyes flew open at the command in it.

“N-Nothing,” you answered, a little worried. You didn’t want to seem like a killjoy, because what did you know? He had told you before all this that he had researched some, and it wasn’t your place to question his confidence. Still, the hand against your cheek didn’t move but in fact, pressed more insistently, and you knew that Kageyama didn’t believe your answer for a second.

You wiggled out from underneath him and gripped his index finger in your palm tightly. Unsure of what to say, what to admit, you settled on a quiet, “it hurt, but I didn’t say anything.”

“Why not?” He had every right to be perplexed, you knew, but you couldn’t help but feel his anger at himself lashing out, licking at your awareness like flames. “Why not tell me? I was hurting you wasn’t I? I knew it, I keep on thinking that I know what to do but-”

“Hey,” it was your turn to feel guilty, “I know much less, and you did the work. I’ll…” You faltered a little, but you took a deep breath at his earnest gaze and soldiered on. “I promise to tell you how I feel next time, okay?”

“Yeah…” It was a quiet acquiescence. Quiet could sum up the entirety of how you two felt at that current moment, until he broke it by shyly lacing his fingers through yours.

Kageyama was still feeling incredibly ashamed and angry with his actions, but he had seen that lost and slightly afraid expression on your face and he knew that right now wasn’t the time to fret about himself. Slowly, he pulled you down onto the bed, keeping a safe distance between the two of you but he squeezed his hand, reassuring you that you weren’t alone. There wasn’t much else to be said for the night, for it was getting dark, and this ordeal had wrung the last of your energy. Still, Kageyama let out a hopeful breath, perhaps he’d make a better attempt at making you smile tomorrow morning.


	6. Oikawa gets pegged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Explicit content, pegging.
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> oikawa getting pegged by his girlfriend: scenario  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments:Short and concise, I like it. Please forgive the un-proofread-ness of this, and enjoy!_

It sounds like a broken orchestra in the room. Oikawa’s harsh moans and your own irregular breathing clash against each other at alternate beats, the walls reflecting the sounds of your own debauchery back in a live replay. Oikawa looks too satisfied with a dildo up his ass for it to be his first time, but you didn’t question him. If it was something he asked of you with that determined press of his lips and a raised eyebrow, you were going to cave one way or another. You had caved within heartbeats, and now you’re both naked on his sheets, his ass up in the air and you were fucking right into him like he did you on bad days.

 _Iwaizumi might be coming back soon_ , your mind wanders, but you stare at your boyfriend’s flushed face and give him a particularly vicious thrust. It would be such a shame to hide that beautiful, perverted expression from the rest of the world.

You reach forwards and slide a lube-slicked finger across his burning cheek. He turns his head into your touch, and you watch with rapture as the transparent liquid smears over his lips, mixing in with the saliva dripping down his chin.

“Tooru,” you murmur into his shoulder, “Tooru, you should see yourself right now.”

A dark, lust filled eye blinks open to watch you, and almost in slow motion he takes your fingers into his mouth and sucks. His lips are tugging gently against your digits and you feel his rough tongue swirling in between the gaps of your fingers. He would never admit it, but he wishes sometimes that you had a cock so he could suck away your sanity through it and watch you fall to pieces like he does.

It’s getting hotter in here, and it’s harder to breathe. He knows this, and he grinds back against your strap-on, managing to complain without words that this wasn’t enough for him. Fine, you pressed your fingers harshly against the sides of his cheeks and slide out of him. The wet plop makes him turn around and stare at you accusingly, but it’s only one second later that all that snaps into a lewd cry of your name when you slam all the way back in. His back arches in a mixture of pain and pleasure, one feeding into the other like some kind of broken loop. He’s tearing up a little bit, but you aren’t fooled. He likes it more when it hurts- when he’s being used like this. You can see how much it pushes him closer towards his breaking point from how his thighs are trembling on either side of you. You don’t relent, and from the way his eyes are closed and his moans sound more like sobs, he doesn’t want you to either.

Oikawa visibly shudders from pleasure when you grab a fistful of his beautiful auburn hair, now matted and clumped with sweat and precum from your fingers. His body shapes a sinful ‘U’ shape and you keep thrusting mercilessly, watching dutifully as his ass eats 8-inches without hesitation.

He’s getting close now, he’s shaking so hard you can feel it underneath your knees. You lean forwards and start biting purple marks along the slim crescent of his spine. The pain makes it all better for him, it sharpens his senses until you’re the only thing that he can understand, that he can remember. Ask him for his own name, and he’ll speak yours back.

It’s with a slow, guttural groan that you hear him come against the sheets. You grind him deeper into his own mess, watching the way it smears underneath his perfect, wrecked skin and allow him to slowly ride his orgasm out against you. You can tell when he’s done when he starts laughing, soft, irregular giggles and you can’t help but laugh along with him.

“It’s always so hot until you go and become all unhinged at the end, Tooru.” 

He smiles, a genuine, completely boneless smile at you and he drags you down onto the bed with him. There’s a soft squelch when fluids get even more shared, but neither of you care.

“You can’t resist my laugh,” he chimes against the curve of your neck, “you’re weak to me.”

He pulls back a little and grins when he sees that out of all the things the two of you have done tonight, it’s that comment that makes you blush. You scrunch your nose up at the smug expression at his face and whack him affectionately on the nose.

“You’re lucky I like you.”

His eyes are twinkling and you close your eyes when you feel him smooth a heated kiss against your chapped lips. He doesn’t say anything in return, but in the end, when his fingers find his way to thread through yours, you knew that a dork would always be a dork, no matter how hard he tried to hide. After all, Oikawa Tooru was never very good at hiding things from you. 


	7. Headcanons: Bokuto and his chubby girlfriend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Explicit content
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hello, dear author ^3^ your words are drug for me. could i request please a nsfw scenario or sfw+nsfw headcanons with bokuto and his chubby girlfriend? thank you  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: My first headcanon post, and boy, this was a lot harder than I thought it’d be! I hope you enjoy! Also seriously, Bokuto is the type of guy who’d fall so damn hard for your personality and your smile. Always love your body, because Bokuto certainly will._

**SFW**

  * Honestly Bokuto would be the kind of guy that doesn’t even notice your size at the beginning, all that he would notice about you would be your eyes the first time you met each other, and he wouldn’t have been able to shut up about it until Akaashi hit him.
  * Surprisingly, he’s the type to be quiet and listen to you whenever you talk about any insecurities you may have, and good lord, did he hug the crap out of you the first time you mentioned that your weight.
  * Like really, he does not care how much you weigh, or what size jeans you wear because what keeps him so glued to you is the way you share his enthusiasm and the way your eyes light up when you laugh.
  * He loves it when you come out of the room in his shirts because you look so ridiculously cozy and all you end up doing together is cuddle for the next hours or so.
  * You spend most of your free afternoons with Bokuto because he seriously can’t leave you alone, especially since there’s very little time you can spend together since he’s at practice all the time.


  * Basically the entire Fukurodani team is on first-name basis with you already because of how much Bokuto shows you off to them. It was pretty awkward at first because you had a distinct feeling that your boyfriend’s enthusiasm towards your existence was not shared with his team but they warmed up to you pretty quickly.
  * It’s hard to deny Bokuto. It’s also hard to not team up against Bokuto sometimes because he’s such a dork.
  * He tried getting you into some volleyball shorts once, and it took him several hours to realize that you were actually not that comfortable in them (and you didn’t want to have anyone else see you when you were feeling like this) but once he did notice, he slipped you out of them pretty quickly and gave you some of his.
  * (and they were fucking massive but he still made you jump around in them anyway)
  * He’s a gigantic dork, a bit oblivious at times and it’s often Kuroo or Akaashi that taps him on the shoulder and calms him down whenever they notice that you’re uncomfortable with something, but honestly, there’s nobody that would love you more for who you are.



 

**NSFW**

  * You thought your first time would be shy and slightly embarrassing, but when it came to it, there was barely any time to breathe properly, let alone hesitate.
  * Bokuto’s the type to touch you all over, his hands smoothing rough circles onto any stretch of bare skin he can reach until you’re squirming underneath his large palms.
  * Mercy also doesn’t exist in his vocabulary, so you know whenever his eyes start dilating when he stares at you hungrily, you’re in for a rough night.
  * Surprisingly he’s not the type to rush anything. It’s like his bullheadedness in volleyball transferred into intense concentration when it comes to you, because he always makes sure that you’re thoroughly aching for more before slowly taking any clothes off.
  * He loves kissing up and down your tummy area and your thighs. He knows that it’s those parts you’re most insecure about, so he spends extra time ravishing that area, trying to kiss his love for you through your skin.
  * His fingers actually rarely leave those areas you realize- no matter what he’s doing, if he’s kissing you, nibbling on your collarbones, licking warm strips down your sides or pressing soft butterfly kisses along your shaking fingers, there’s always a hand caressing you somewhere.
  * He’s been told before that it’s like he wants to be everywhere constantly, and it makes you feel so incredibly loved and cherished every time he tries to do so.
  * For how gentle he is with you during the build up, he’s equally as rough with you when he’s in you. You can tell from the crease of his forehead that he tries to tone it down sometimes, but it’s nearly impossible when he feels your thighs tense around his waist, and he just can’t help but let loose.
  * His thrusts are always heated, jagged affairs- he grips you around your waist with his hands, or he hugs you to him in a massive bear hug that swallows all of you (there’s never a moment where he leaves your body alone) and he goes for it.
  * It always shakes you to your core.
  * Rarely does he look away from you or close his eyes. He knows, he always knows, and he wants to tell you how you’re perfect the way you are, and how much he loves every inch of you with his gaze that burns his affection into you like a brand.
  * Is he a cuddler afterwards? It’s Bokuto, you don’t have to ask. Before he collapses and passes out with his breath fanning against your neck, he always makes sure trace the outline of your body at least once with a stray finger. You’re perfect the way you are, and he’s so very glad that he’s the one who gets to show you that. 




	8. Soulmates AU with kuroo and tattooed arms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by im-not-crying-youre-crying:
>
>>   
> i was wondering if you could write a soul mate au where the first words your soul mate says to you appear on your skin before you meet them? i'm a mess for that one tbh... but could you make it a tsukishima and a female s/o? maybe a relieved tsukki because he never thought he'd 1) ever have an s/o to accept him completely and 2) ever find them since it's such a big world? thank you!!!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I accidentally took this prompt and ran a marathon with it. Zero chill was involved while writing this, so I hope you forgive the fact that this turned out probably more angsty and much more fic than scenario in the end. (A few of my pairings snuck their way into some honourable mentions, don’t mind those, just passing by!) Thank you for your support and patience, I hope you enjoy this!_

It’s a racket, even with his usual headphones on, and the people around him didn’t stop swirling and moving on with their lives. It’s amongst this ridiculous crowd that Tsukishima shivered. It’s Christmas Eve, and he’s never felt so incredibly alone, surrounded by so many strangers. The streets of Tokyo were a hundred times more viciously packed than Miyagi, and his lack of familiarity with these streets were starting to kick in. Sure, he knew them by name, but he didn’t have the freedom to wander around, didn’t know where the best spots were, and definitely didn’t know where he could hang around in relative peace and quiet until his parents were done with their anniversary dinner at home.

He could see it now, everyone and their mothers flashing bits of skin around haphazardly on the street. Not that his parents were any better. It being the season for giving and in memory of their beautiful proposal, all Tsukishima had been hearing all day was chatter about those stupid marks. Couples were kissing each others’ everywhere he went, and his parents had been fondling theirs ever since breakfast.

The thing is, if you asked a year ago when Tsukishima was still a first year in university, he’d have told you with incredible disinterest and denial that he thought it was stupid and a hinderance- after all, who wants to live with the fact that your soul mate was predestined, that the person you fall in love with isn’t really your choice after all? He would have told you all that to your face, but that was before all his friends started pairing up and finding their soul mates. His previous conviction that this bullshit wouldn’t work out in the long run was trampled in the dust as he watched Suga and Daichi fall so deeply in love with each other that they practically melted into one being. Then there was Lev and Kenma, something that would have never crossed a sane person’s mind, but Tsukishima had to catch a glimpse of how Kenma  _glowed_  around Lev, and he had spent the following evening testing out how many shots of Jack Daniel’s he could down before Kuroo confiscated his alcohol.

Speaking of Kuroo… Tsukishima paused in his tracks, ignoring how at least three people bumped into him after that, and tapped in Kuroo’s number. At least he was the one guy that Tsukishima could count on to genuinely not give a shit about soul marks at this time of night.

 _“Yo.”_ Tsukishima could feel some of the tension roll away from his shoulders at Kuroo’s lazy drawl.

“Busy, Kuroo?”

_“Not particularly. Just out with Tooru.”_

Indeed, that actually surprised him when he first heard that the great Oikawa had started spending more time with Kuroo ever since they got into the same university. Another pair, even though it wasn’t romantic. Faintly, he wondered what Yamaguchi was up to right then. With his luck, probably with a girl of his own too.

_“I can hear you thinking from over here, Tsukki.”_

Tsukishima huffed dryly. “Is that so?”

_“It is so. Don’t let it bother you, alright? Not that I know why you’re even walking around in public during prime-time couples weekend, but the inks aren’t everything.”_

“As you keep telling me. And Christmas Eve with Oikawa? Don’t tell me you discovered his name inked across your derrière last night.”

_“Nah, his girlfriend broke up with him last week, and Bokuto’s busy.”_

“Brokuto? Too busy for you?”

 _“Yeah.”_  There was an uncomfortable pause from Kuroo’s end, and somewhere around his chest area, Tsukishima felt what was coming.  _“With Keiji. Turns out they’re the ones who discovered ink overnight. Not on their asses, but y’know.”_

“I see. Well, congratulations on another beautiful relationship.”

_“Tsukki…”_

“What?” Crap, even he could hear the bitterness that had leaked into his voice.

_“You’ll be okay. It’s different for everyone. Besides, if all else fails, you can come and join my inkless club. It’s just me and Tooru at the moment.”_

“And your club meetings are to go on man-dates with each other?”

_“He’s better company than my left hand.”_

“Try your right then,” Tsukishima grimaced at the image and he hears Oikawa cackling in the background. “Wash your hands before practice on Thursday, you stupid cat.”

_“Yeah, yeah.”_

The phone clicked as Kuroo cut the call, and Tsukishima lifted a hand up to rub wearily at his eyes. His legs felt more and more like lead with each step he took towards an unknown destination. He knew Kuroo meant well, but the world where being unmarked was acceptable was quickly shrinking. People were already beginning to whisper and stare at school, and what little comfort he had in solitude would turn into an island where all he could do was watch other ships sail by. It was 9.30pm in bustling Shibuya, filled with gentle Christmas tunes and love in the air and Tsukishima considered locking himself in the school gym for the fourth time that evening.

 

* * *

 

It was Monday, and the strain against Tsukishima’s temples felt no better than before. The worst part of the storm had passed, but unless he caved in to his inner child and became a NEET, there was no way to avoid society. Especially this society where people would start conversations with other strangers due to the stupid ink fad. Biologically, ink would start appearing after the end of puberty at around 14, but most of the time people would find it appearing later on in life such as university or during their first few years of employment simply because of the increased chances of meeting new people. In rare cases, people would find their soulmates during high school, but surprisingly, those relationships always started a few years later after discovery, and not immediately. Tsukishima had wondered why that was the case in the past, until Suga had actually started explaining in so much detail that the pressure from being inkless had begun to grate on his nerves.

In any case, he made his way brusquely down the first floor corridor. It wasn’t unusual to have campus flooded with people of all shapes and sizes at all times. Life had turned into a dating game, after all, and everyone wanted to swarm to places with more chances, like some twisted imitation of a mating season.

_“Oh my God, that’s so cute! Did you guys find out at the karaoke bar last night?”_

_“Physics was hell today… You should have seen his face, the Professor was so hungover!”_

_“The hell? I don’t owe her chocolates- what’s this, Valentine’s day?”_

_“Hey… Isn’t that blonde guy the one with all Engineering 106B made a betting pool of? The inkless one.”_

Tsukishima barely flinched as a gaggle of girls no taller than five foot four barreled into him. He was used to it, this constant gossip about his status as inkless. It seemed like being the one person who didn’t care about it made him some kind of department celebrity because apparently it was impossible to focus on something else other than finding a significant other. Sometimes he wondered why these people even bothered going to school when all they wanted to do was discuss relationships 24/7.

Squeezing his way through another pile of thirsty young freshman, he shoved open the lecture hall door with slightly more force than necessary and made his way to his seat. The stares had simmered down to a low three months into the semester, but the whispers never died down.

“Not today either,” Tsukishima called out, and he watched the students be divided into either sighs of relief or disgruntled mutters.

_Like I’d tell you bunch of morons._

True to form, Physics was hell. However, what he couldn’t decide if it was a blessing or a curse was the rough splattering of the word  _‘inertia’_  in a muted shade of violet on his pelvis later that night.

Of all the goddamn words too. For a fearful moment the thought that it was  _Kuroo_ that was his soul mate crossed his poor traumatized mind because seriously, this was such a nerdy thing to have on someone’s skin. Tsukishima gripped his phone in a vice and it was only until a confused ‘No…?’ blinked up at him from the screen that he let blood flow back into his fingers. Thank Jesus. He’d never live it down if it was someone as insufferable as the bedhead man.

God, his vision was starting to blur a little. His heart rate was pounding at 90 mph, and he could hear the thudding in his ears. It was chipping away at his composure, his firm belief that he wasn’t any less of a man than someone with a soul mate, and Tsukishima curled up into a ‘brace’ position because he was shaking and it was getting too hard to breathe. Trembling fingers clutched at the offending splash of colour around his hip and he sneaked a slightly terrified glance at his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. He’d never… he’d been so  _protected_  by thick, iron walls of indifference. He didn’t want to be like everyone out there, to be no different from the group of desperate men wishing for someone to make out with that wouldn’t leave them no matter how pathetic they were.

But that was it, wasn’t it? Tsukishima pushed himself up slowly with an elbow. Taking a deep breath for good measure, he looked at his ink in earnest for the first time that evening. It was so incredibly foreign on his pale, ivory skin, and he felt a burning behind his eyes. In the end… he knew the truth. The ugly, disgusting truth that he was indeed like everyone else, no more special than those girls he found so annoying during class hours. He could see it in his eyes, feel it in his bones, the primal need to be loved, to be accepted. To not be so incredibly  _alone_.

The tears that came after were silent, accompanied only by the occasional shiver. Be they out of relief or shame, for the first time in his life, Tsukishima Kei cried himself to sleep that night.

 

* * *

 

He wouldn’t say that his life had changed, per se, but it’d probably stray closer to the realm of slightly traumatized. Tsukishima wasn’t bad at physics- far from it actually, as an engineering major, but never in his life had he had to try and inject some form of Newtonian law into every conversation he had. ‘Every’ being, far more than he was comfortable with.

Feeling a little unnerved by how much he had been starting conversations with complete strangers in the physics building, he flushed an uncomfortable pink when he was yet again met with a confused yet indulgent look from a lowerclassman. He had spent a good part of the day floating about his department, doing exactly what he hated other people doing, which was picking up random strangers. He didn’t want to be discriminatory and think that ‘inertia’ was a word that only physics majors would use, but the more time he spent talking to his own people, the more he realized that seriously, they were far too nerdy to even bring up such a basic word. He’d tried all of his classes that day. He’d even tried his professors, for the love of all that was holy, and he didn’t think he’d ever forget their expressions as the most stoic student of all time sauntered up and started a conversation about Newton out of nowhere. He knew that his behaviour was odd and also very obvious, if the sudden increase in whispers around him told him anything. Tsukishima had passed most of his morning with some semblance of composure only by sticking firmly to his ‘ _still not telling you people shit_ ’ motto.

Thankfully, it toned down a little once he left his department. He was still relatively unknown anywhere else, and after the initial prickliness faded away, Tsukishima found that actually, talking to people wasn’t all that bad. In his mind, it was always a pointless activity when you clearly had no motive other than to find out about someone else’s ink, but he’d gone through several conversations with girls and guys of all types today and each time they had greeted him and indulged him with more grace than he’d ever given them credit for. Feeling incredibly abashed, his conversation starters had grown from abrupt, prodding questions to a quiet curiousity about their lives. Even though it all amounted to absolutely nothing, as nobody showed any sign of recognition towards his strange conversation topic, at least he could say that in a few short hours, his character had matured at least a little.

To his own disbelief, Tsukishima kept his ears peeled even during bathroom breaks. It was incredibly stupid, he thought to himself, because he was pretty sure he should at least relax a little for something like a call of nature, but alas, his obsession with detail left him as tense as ever. Not that great for the echoing sounds of the urinal to hit him even harder than usual, but a soft conversation from outside wafted into his hearing and he stopped mid-stream.

“W-wha-” He’d never zipped up that fast in his life, and his head was out of the men’s bathroom in seconds. The corridor remained as empty as it had been a few minutes ago, and Tsukishima feels his determination snap. He wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating girls at this point, but he was so incredibly done. How the hell did people do this every day with so much enthusiasm?

His walk home was angry. No more frustrated than usual, but this time even his roommates seemed to avoid him once they caught a glimpse of his face. The fight between hope and his usual pessimism seemed to have reached its apex as he hurled his bag into a corner into a room, hopefully forgotten. The rush of joy and relief he felt this morning, all eager to find his soulmate seemed to have calmed down and left him with his wits and logic again. Tsukishima sat down at his desk, his desk lamp his only source of light this late at night, and his shadow seemed more forlorn than usual. Something in the back of his mind told him that it was far too early to give up, but he couldn’t help it. It shouted at him, the loud, unforgiving voice of resignation, and with each harsh whisper, Tsukishima felt like his ink meant little more than a scar.

He wondered if it was possible for someone to have ink without a partner. A heavy sigh tore itself from his throat, and he forced a battered smile when he heard the soft sound of Suga’s ‘hello?’ on the other end of the phone.

“Suga-san,” he dropped his forehead against an open palm, “how have you been lately?”

 

* * *

 

“Dude, your eye bags,” was the first thing that Tsukishima heard from Kuroo when they met up for practice.

The halls were empty this late in the day, all the students as eager to file out of classes as they were to meet up with their friends. Their sneakers made minimal noise against the cold cement, and Kuroo leaned forwards to poke at one of Tsukishima’s said eye bags when no response came.

“I know,” Tsukishima batted the hand away irritably, “it’s been a rough week.”

Kuroo could only raise an eyebrow at that, but he cleverly remained silent. The questionable text he received two nights ago definitely indicated something, but he wasn’t about to pry where he wasn’t wanted. Tsukishima could feel the silent understanding emanating from his friend, and his gratefulness remained unsaid and hovered between the two of them. They both knew that the other knew, and that was enough.

“Ready to get beat up in 3v3s again?”

“I’m pairing up with Iwaizumi-san this time. It’s the best way to see your face get bashed in.”

“Wow,” Kuroo somehow managed to hold his chest in mock-affront and also slap Tsukishima on the back at the same time, “you know I’m not into pain.”

Tsukishima’s deadpan reply died on his lips when he caught sight of a single, awkward outline of a girl waiting for someone by their gym. He shot a questioning glance at Kuroo, but was met with a noncommittal shrug. He watched in confusion as his friend strode off alone, a dismissive hand wave the only indication that he wasn’t ditching him.

There was only one thing left to do, he supposed.

“Waiting for Oikawa?”

Thankfully, Tsukishima’s voice sounded much friendlier than usual after a whole day of making small talk with strangers. It wasn’t unusual for girls to hover around the gym during volleyball hours, waiting for any opportunity to chat up the resident idol, but it was late and most of them had scampered off home when the clock hit five.

“It’s closed practice today, sorry,” he tried again. There wasn’t a response, and girl craned her neck up to look at him with a burning sort of determination. His throat squeezed shut, catching a breath in muted suspense. Her lips began to part, and Tsukishima could see that she was struggling to overcome her shyness from the way her hands were wringing the circulation out of each other. He closed his eyes.  _Time to take a leap_.

It’s the third time he’s spoken, and in any other situation, this would be a very embarrassing one-sided conversation. “So… ever had that feeling where you’re being pushed along in life and can’t seem to stop for a second?”

The girl broke into a smile, her fingers relaxing, and Tsukishima felt his pulse becoming as still as his breath was in that moment.

“You mean like inertia?”

“Yeah,” his exhale was coming out in stutters, “like inertia.”

“Then yes, I have. I’d say… right now?” her voice sounded a hundred times sweeter than a few seconds ago and Tsukishima didn’t know what to do with himself as he stared at her with a thudding heart and the dawning realization that  _holy shit_ , this was happening. She said it, and she was smiling at him with all the knowledge in the world.

Kuroo could wait. So could everything involved practice right then, because another disbelieving laugh was all it took for Tsukishima to take her hand and tug her along with him out of campus.

He’d never been very good at talking to girls. Usually he just defaulted to whatever tone he took with his male friends, and not surprisingly, that didn’t exactly pave the way to their hearts. It didn’t seem to matter with her though. Lame comment after lame comment, she laughed with him, and Tsukishima had to tear his gaze away from the way her eyes crinkled at the edges in order to keep his eyes on their path.  _Calm down_ , his mind was telling him, but it didn’t matter. Her hand was gripping his as tightly as he was hers, and he knew that it was stupid and irrational to literally fall heads over heels in obsession over someone he’d exchanged little more than a conversation with, but whatever he felt, he could feel it from her tenfold.

“My bus stop is nearby,” he could hear the reluctance in her voice, and it’s nothing he didn’t feel too. “I’ll hear the rest of your story about Akiteru later, okay?” Once again, Tsukishima felt himself dissolve a little under her crooked smile.

“I’ll text you,” he replied softly. She beamed at his response, and God, Tsukishima could swear he mysteriously turned fifteen again. Not the world’s most comforting sensation- it felt like a freefall- but he knew that nothing in the world could make him regret it.

The rest of his walk home was filled with the image of her back, making her way towards her bus station, her slightly tangled hair being tugged through nervous fingers. Even though it was silent on his street, he didn’t feel alone for a second.

 

* * *

 

If there was a time when Tsukishima was glad of the fact that he didn’t have a roommate, it would be then. He wasn’t sure he himself would be able to deal with the reality of the shit-eating grin on his face as he texted his soulmate more stupid details about his high school volleyball career. Which reminded him, actually.

 _To: inertia [21:32]_  how did you know i was going to be at the gym today?

 _From: inertia [21:33]_ i kinda asked around and someone told me that volleyball practice happened on thursdays :P

 _To: inertia [21:34]_  so you figured out it was me beforehand

 _From: inertia [21:35]_  i didnt

 _From: inertia [21:36]_  you probably wont understand this but its pretty awk having a guy’s name under your ribcage

 _From: inertia [21:36]_  esp if you’re a girl

 _To: inertia [21:37]_  ????

 _From: inertia [21:38]_  i have ‘waiting for oikawa’ in a gorgeous dark green on my abdomen

 _From: inertia [21:38]_  most of my friends think he’s my soulmate since ive asked about him so much this past week

 _From: inertia [21:38]_  so there’s another man’s name on me forever :D

 _To: great king [21:39]_  ffs oikawa

 _From: great king [21:40]_ wat???? mean! 


	9. Crossover: Tokyo Ghoul with Kuroo, Suga and Kageyama

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Mild gore
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> yaaeeeyy crossover anon here!! well once uve finished ur mid terms (good luck by the way, i live in aus and have my year 11 final exams in like 2 weeks so lets do this yea???) but anyway if you were able to do a haikyuu/tokyo ghoul au with kuroo, suga and kages (or like any other boi of ur choice) where their s/o finds out their ghouls? or like one where she asks to touch his kagune or osmething literally any scenario im craving once agasin good luck on ur examssss <333  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Another experimentation with a different kind of writing- I took a more cinematic approach this time, and I hope it works out. Please ignore my waxing poetry about Kuroo’s love, I seriously have no chill when it comes to that dork. Also, I was worried that I’d miss your exam period so I pushed this one to the top of my list! Good luck on your exams (or your results if I really am too late), and thank you for sending in a prompt. :) I hope you enjoy!_

**Kuroo**  has always been unnervingly good at keeping things from you. It had taken many, many dates for you to even start chipping away at that smooth smile before it turned into something considerably more dorky- and that was pretty much the date that you decided your heart was as good as gone. However, you aren’t a fool, and the only reason you’d date someone with so much  _possibility_  was because he’d opened his chest for you one night, and you’d seen firsthand that heart of gold that beats only for you. The rhythm of that heartbeat promised that your trust wasn’t something that he would even consider playing around with.

That’s why the first time you see his kagune- the first time you learn that he  _has_  a kagune is at 2am in the morning. It’s been an entertaining late night showing for a silly Marvel movie that you’d rather pushed him into watching with you, and most of it had been spent making silly remarks to each other, tossing popcorn around for points. You’d both walked out of the theatre even more cheerful than before, wrapped up in the momentum of a late evening date. On the street, the night air is sharp against your cheekbones, tinting your cheeks a pale scarlet. His hands are gloveless, wrapping around your own and his eyes are bright with affection and amusement while he watches you tilt your head back to laugh at something he says.

The way back home is a little different from usual tonight; there’s late night construction for a new pedestrian bridge, so with a shrug, the both of you sidle into a small series of alleyways back to your place instead. It isn’t anywhere you haven’t been before since you walk this route every other day when the sky is light, but your reaction is still a thousand times too slow when the first haunting calls of your own name reach your ears. By the time you blink, Kuroo’s in front of you, his large figure becoming your shield, the only reason why you haven’t been ripped in half by a writhing rinkaku tentacle right in front of your face. Kuroo’s grip on it tightens and he sees you freeze, your mind blanking out- he doesn’t even give the starving ghoul enough time to twitch when he’s already pressed up against it, koukaku reflecting a bottomless black around his body like volcanic glass. His claws are already ripping into everything he can reach- the eyes, the stomach, the calves, the rinkaku, the  _screams_  are torn in half before they even escape the mangled remains of a throat.

Honestly, you don’t really remember much else about the trip back. You recall… a limb? Arms, probably, warm and firm wrapped around you and the rest of the world blurs in your vision like a crossfade as Kuroo whisks you away as fast as possible. It’s like he doesn’t want you to have enough time to digest the fact that your boyfriend had just desecrated a body in front of you. The hazy speed of the world revolving around you does provide a good distraction. By the time your mind’s moved onto the next thought, he’s locking the door behind him and you’re standing there a bit confused in the middle of his slightly chilly laundry room. He tells you quietly that it was more convenient to come here instead of yours, he’s got a carton of bleach-detergent mix that’s magic for removing blood stains on fabric. He’s not sure anymore if he’s waiting for your response, or he’s just talking over his insecurity, but his breathing relaxes when there’s no hesitation from you as you place your dirtied clothing into his open hands. He’s scrubbing in swift, practiced movements and you move to wait for him in the empty living room, feeling a bit useless.

There’s a few minutes of awkwardness where neither of you are sure what to do. You’re standing in a shirt of Kuroo’s that’s usually left for when you stay over at his place, and he’s shirtless. He’s watching you, hands twitching at his sides because he really doesn’t know how to take this, and admittedly, it’s been a bit traumatizing for you this evening- you’re not quite used to having bits of intestine being tossed around in the air. This isn’t anywhere near how he wanted you to find out, but when he promises you that he’d always planned on telling you when the time was right, you believe him. He doesn’t have to tell you anything for you to know that he’s not the type of person to lie his way through a relationship, no matter how much of his feelings were at risk. You want to tell him so badly- that it’s okay, it’s always been okay, because he’s been so sharped tongue from the start and it brings a small smile to your face because it takes more than a feeble mind to keep up with this man in the first place.

It feels better in the couch with a blanket wrapping around the both of you. His lips turn, ready to say something, but you’re interrupting him quickly because  _you want to see it again, is it okay?_ The relief in his eyes almost turns them into crystal. You run your fingers across the stretch of materialized kagune and you’re mesmerized. He’s as surprised as you are enraptured by the different shades of ink that are reflected by it, and you don’t really notice that he’s moving closer and closer to you until his arms are around you. They’re still stiff from the armour, but they’re as warm as his breath flitting across your shoulder, and they’re holding you with such gentleness. He’s still afraid, so very afraid that he’ll scare you away with one wrong move, but it takes less than a second for all of it to be melted away when you’re bringing one of his clawed hands up to your face. They’re a few degrees cooler than his arms, and you place a small kiss in his palm before resting it against your cheek.

Your  _thank you for saving me tonight_  comes with a crooked smile. It’s as warm as his face is feeling, and that’s all you know how to give him right now because his worry hurts you as much as it does him. It only takes a few more beats until everything that Kuroo’s built up in his head cracks under the pressure of your acceptance. He’s rolling around on the carpet with you now, his heart swelling at the sounds of your warm laugh. His face is buried in your hair, and your cheeks cradled preciously against the smooth expanse of his neck and he chokes out how much he  _fucking loves you_.

 

* * *

 

 

 **Suga**  wouldn’t keep something like this from you without reason. He’s never wanted to interrupt your daily life, your perception of beauty in this city, and even though the rational side of him tells him often that you’re a big girl- that you’d be able to accept the truth in whatever form it takes- he doesn’t want to force change from you. All that holds; it works perfectly fine until he comes home one afternoon from work, and the living room looks like someone’s been nesting in there, albeit in a slightly frenzied style. It takes a few minutes of hot cocoa in a christmas mug and some digging underneath that nest to pry out the truth from you.

Your early morning had been spent mostly at the police station. You had seen a lost pair of children on your way from the coffee shop that Suga owns; they looked around 6, and they were meandering around the streets of Tokyo. It’s a busy city so the chances of being spotted are higher, but the reverse also works- it’s much easier to get lost in the crowd. You had jogged towards them, about to warn the brother about wandering around on his own with his sister, when they had vanished in front of your eyes. Following them into a small series of narrow alleys yielded only a burning sensation in your throat which you realized, several moments too late, that it was because you had vomited from the sight of both children in the form of strips of flesh. A ghoul perched on top of a compact air conditioning unit was making his way through them with a relieved satisfaction.

You never found out if you had been noticed or not, because your self preservation had belatedly kicked in and you had run the heck for it. Twenty minutes later and two more turns of retching into a drain, the police had your story written down and the CCG contacted. Suga’s expression changes as you finish your tale and he shifts forwards, his hands on his folded knees and you bend back a little to make room for his earnest face. You tell him honestly when he asks you- that it was a pair of six year old children, with the possibilities of the universe ahead of them and the only purpose they managed to serve was to satisfy someone’s hunger. Ghouls have always lived among you, you knew this and Suga only watches and waits patiently as you struggle to find a handle on your reality again. There are no more questions from either of you for the night. He wraps the blankets around you tighter, and that’s all he can do to prepare you for what he’s going to do because you’ve been hurt enough times to have earned this barrier from him. His eyes are gazing right at your soul when he tells you he’s a ghoul too.

Suga doesn’t want you to be with someone you might feel disgusted towards. You deserve more than obligation, more than just loyalty, and after what you’ve seen today, you deserve to know everything. There’s several quiet moments, and he’s taken aback when you finally meet his eyes again and they’re brighter than before. You’ve always suspected, to tell the truth. It never popped up much because he’s always brought home his own food for dinner, you’ve never been asked to cook his share, and you’ve also noticed those boxes in the fridge that did not smell like indian curry. You tell him, with a finger touching his cheek, that he always scrunches his nose up a bit whenever he’s offered anything you’re eating or drinking, and that you’re sorry that he’s had to accept some of it and you haven’t missed the way he looks a little pale afterwards.

For a moment he thinks that his heart’s stopped. He never knew, and you never let on. It’s like both of you were so focused on keeping things from each other that neither of you had bothered to look beyond and wonder- did they really? There’s a small hesitation in them, but you reach your arms out for him and all he can do is smile, a slightly exasperated one, and fall into them like it was the only option left for him in this life. He can’t tell if you’re holding him closer to you or if it’s his arms that are tighter. It’s like this for a while, the two of you rocking backwards and forwards a little in a soothing rhythm and in the back of his mind Suga counts the small shadows of the clouds that are flat against the wooden floor.

It’s a tender whisper in his ear. You murmur that you’re fine with whatever he is- he’s never hurt you, he’s never lied to you, and you don’t need anything more from him to believe from the bottom of your being that he loves you- that he’s so in love with you with everything that’s in him. The fear doesn’t matter, and neither does the inevitable disillusion with the imperfect world the both of you are stuck in, as long as he keeps holding onto you long enough that the images fade from your mind. He listens to you and the embrace tightens. He’s so  _incredibly proud of you_.

It’s only three in the afternoon, but that’s how the both of you fall asleep in a soft doze, in a pile of clothes and blankets, his fingers carding through your hair.

 

* * *

 

 

 **Kageyama**  actually fucks up. It’s not a moment of dire need, and it’s not a planned confession. He honestly just wants to stretch a little, flex for a quick moment when nobody’s watching because he didn’t expect being a national volleyball player to involve four hour strategy meetings on a saturday. Truthfully, sometimes he itches to let loose on the court, to allow himself to become everything that he’s capable of and watch his opponents freeze as he causes absolute chaos. Alas, the world doesn’t function according to Kageyama’s preferences, and he lives another day knowing that he’s good enough to beat half of the national teams out there without needing to be anything more than human.

The lights are actually off, so you don’t blame your boyfriend for not realizing someone’s home. You’re actually just home yourself from a day out with some friends. You’ve been back for approximately five minutes, sipping on a glass of milk because the walk home from the bus stop is nothing to sniff at. It calm and actually peaceful in the dark kitchen, and then Kageyama strolls in through the door, tossing his sports bag carelessly onto the shoe rack and unfurls his kagune in front of your widening eyes. It’s the first time you’ve seen one this close- there were always pictures and commercials on television that teach you about kagunes and what to look out for, but the tails that erupt seamlessly from his tailbone can be nothing but breathtaking. In many ways.

The first breath that it takes from you is from awe, and also a fair amount of shock. The second breath is from the realization that you’re actually a little ticked off at the fact that he’s never bothered to bring it up to you that you were dating a  _ghoul_ , for the love of God. At least he has the decency to jump in surprise when he hears you ask him dryly if he was in the mood for a massage too this evening. He doesn’t know what you’re thinking or feeling, but at this rate, he’s at least ten times more terrified than you appear to be at the moment. His body seizes up and his bikaku stops waving with the soft wind that blows through a window that neither of you remembered to close that morning.

You try not to laugh at the absolute terror that sets into his eyes once he’s realized the full gravity of what he’s done. He’s still frozen in place when you walk up to him, those eyes of a dusty cobalt blue following your every move. Two fingers tap him on the tip of his nose, because what did he take you for- his personality is so much more of an obstacle to overcome than a kagune could ever be. You can be a bit of a bully sometimes, he decides, and he’s mid-protest when you set down your glass quietly on the table next to you and hug him with all the strength you have. He’s stunned, but he returns it because it’s the one thing his body will always know how to do on reflex. It takes some time for his pulse to pick up from zero to a hundred, but he warms up to you. He can feel your patience through your touch. You’re giving him all the time he needs to calm himself down, the person who really shouldn’t be the shocked party around here but he takes it for all that it’s worth. He allows himself to believe that you’re not going to run away, because you  _don’t_  think he’s a monster, and relieved tears prick at his eyes because you are the one good thing in his life that he never thought he’d find.

More curious than surprised, you run a hand over a tail and all of them shift in shock (he stammers an apology for the sudden movement, but all you do is wait for them to calm down again before resuming your examination). They feel like cotton dipped in concrete, their wide, unashamed movements breaking through the air like ripples. Kageyama slumps against your smaller frame when you press lightly against his kagune in a regular caress. He knows he’s lost at least half the edginess he usually has because he feels rather like a puppy at the moment, but he lets you continue. This reaction from you far exceeds any hopes he had harboured, and even though he’s not a man who laughs often, a wavering smile parts his stoic face and the two of you stay like that for as many moments as possible.

You’re the first to pull apart, and he’s faced with the reality that someone has to say something to break the silence yet he’s a bit afraid to ask you any more. The only sign he gets that you noticed his struggle is your kind affirmation that he’s free to stretch for as much as he wants- this is his home, and there’s no reason to hold back in a place that’s supposed to be a sanctuary.  _How was his day, by the way?_  He can’t respond, there’s no way there’s anything adequate to follow up from all that love he still wasn’t sure he deserved, but he pushes through the shell-shock and the he lets you go to melt weakly into the couch. He’s trying to do your acceptance justice as he recounts his meeting with as much feeling as possible while watching you bustle about, getting your dinner ready, and that dopey smile on his face betrays everything he’s ever felt towards you.


	10. Mafia AU with Bokuto, Akaashi, Kuroo, Oikawa and Iwaizumi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Mild violence
> 
> Prompt by nerdypengy:
>
>>   
> can i please request a mafia/gang/yakuza au for bokuto, akaashi, kuroo, oikawa, and iwaizumi, where the rival opposing family member is trying to seduce their cute civilian s/o? ugghh i love it so much when the boys get all dangerous and protective (*≧∀≦*)! thank you so much and i hope you have a nice day!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: So… I said that I don’t write series, but I had to go and try out a dialogue-centered style this time and grammar takes up a lot of space. I’m going to post each character’s scenario in individual posts as I complete them and I’ll update each one with links. Thank you for waiting this long, and I hope you enjoy!_

He doesn’t like the way blondie’s hand snakes up to touch her shoulder. Oh! And there was the other one that’s hovering around her waist and  **Bokuto**  seriously almost breaks something. Which is really, really not good, because he was warned about this beforehand and he really doesn’t want to get in trouble again.

He sneaks another peek at his girlfriend.

“Yeah okay,” he growls, “this isn’t going to work out.”

“Bo,” a voice pops out from behind him and Bokuto’s rage takes a quick break to make way for surprise, “my man, it’s going to be alright. She’s a big girl.”

“But look at his  _hands_ , Kuroo! He’s like, all over her!”

“She can’t help it if she looks good in a dress.”

Bokuto trusts Kuroo with all his heart, but seriously, this is so not the time. He gives his best friend small side eye and Kuroo immediately puts his hands up in surrender.

“Hey, hey, she’s all yours. Well, that is if blondie doesn’t get to her first.”

Kuroo points at the scene that’s starting to look more and more like something from a romcom- and Bokuto’s not on the winning side. If his hair was responsive to how much stress he was feeling at any given moment, his peaks would probably be lightning rods by now.

“I’m not allowed to make a scene, right?”

“Bingo.”

Bokuto thinks. “So it’s okay if I beat him up really quietly?”

“Bro, it’s not an inter-family mingling if you gouge someone’s eyes out,” Kuroo points out. He too takes a moment to think, however. It’s good to do so, because you never really know what Bokuto’s going to do next. “If you do end up doing something, I’m filming it,” he adds.

“Whose side are you on???”

He says that, but without a doubt he knows that Kuroo’s always on his side, so he grins as he complains about his shitty friend. It’s easy back-and-forth banter- good for the mixer, really- but it almost makes Bokuto forget about his girlfriend. Who, at this current moment, has an attractive blonde man hovering by her ear, whispering God knows what. From what he could see from across the room, and anything more suggestive than the Communist Manifesto, Bokuto will not tolerate.

Kuroo doesn’t stop him when he decides to march on full steam ahead.

Blondie actually has the audacity to look surprised when Bokuto grabs the hand that’s seriously two centimeters away from touching her  _ass_  and twists it against his back with a single motion. Bokuto doesn’t dare look at his girlfriend right now because he’s probably on his twentieth warning from her about violence in public, but he seriously hopes that his burning stare does all the damage his hands aren’t allowed to.

“Gimme a sec, I’ll be right back for you,” he apologises earnestly at his girlfriend’s very nice shoes, and tugs blondie along with him until they’re behind at least three buildings away from the venue. He let’s him go with a shove, and stares some more.

“It sucks not being able to do anything to your face.”

Blondie’s hands are starting to wave about in the air in confusion, and Bokuto wonders when they’re going to find their way into fists. Tomorrow probably, at the rate the guy’s limbs seem to be responding to his brain.

“What the fuck, man?” barks blondie.

Bokuto tries again. “I said, I wish I could punch you.” This guy doesn’t seem terribly bright, honestly, and Bokuto doesn’t really like repeating himself. (Ironic because half the time anything his friends tell him doesn’t stick either.)

“Who the fuck are you?”

“She’s my girlfriend,” he explains, “the girl you were groping.”

“A civilian?”

“You got a problem with that?”

“No,” a nasty smile grows on blondie’s face and Bokuto takes a step forward without realizing it, “I’ve got no problem with her. Is she happy with you? Think she’d be into sharing a few nights with me when you’re busy?”

Bokuto sees red. One step turns into three- then five- and before he knows it he’s launching himself into the air and brings down the full force of gravity onto blondie’s face.

“I’m not saying she’s easy or anything,” for  _fuck’s_  sake the guy was still talking, clearly not enough teeth have been knocked out yet, “because she’s pretty adorable and I make a mean breakfast-”

“She won’t do  _jack_  with you, asshole,” Bokuto bellows mid-punch, “‘cus if I don’t beat the fuck out of you after this, she will!”

True, because that girl actually has very, very good reflexes and a mind-boggling level of strength for someone with minimal muscles. Bokuto’s face could vouch for her punching arm.

“Ah, crap.” It only takes him around four more pummels for blondie to become more of a redhead and Bokuto can only think of one solution. He takes the man by the ankle and tosses him into something that looks like an open basement bar under construction and prays quickly to Jesus that it’ll be a few days until they catch up with him.

\- - -

Kuroo’s laughing when Bokuto creeps back into the massive ballroom, and he can’t help but grin a little (very sheepishly, though) and shoot his bro a sneaky salute. Unfortunately, his girlfriend isn’t quite so amused.

“Your smile is super pretty, you know,” he tries. She’s still looking… at him? Slightly through him, it feels like, and Bokuto squirms in his suit.

“I’m not smiling right now, though,” she replies.

Bokuto cries a little inside. Attempt failed.

“Are you mad? Did I make you annoyed again? Did I do something unnecessary??”

“Kou-chan, calm down, people are starting to stare.”

He settles down, but he’s not quite sure he can be calm. She seems to be doing a fine job of that though- her face is as serene as buddha’s grave. He doesn’t know what to say, so he pokes her in the cheek.

“He was actually getting a bit creepy, so thank you.”

Bokuto can’t believe his ears. His eyes are wide and massive and they’re looking at her with equal amounts of bewilderment and extreme, extreme pride.

“Really?? Aw man, and I was super worried that you’d tell me off for being impulsive and stuff again-”

“-Yeah,” she’s speaking pretty quietly so Bokuto moves closer, “I’m just helping out with the venue so I’d be in trouble if I left a bad impression on the guests.”

“How much trouble?”

She’s smiling gently at him now, and he thinks he can subsist on the fondness in it for the next two years. “Well, the ‘I wouldn’t be able to go to Fiji with you next month’ kind of trouble.”

“Ohhhhh…” He traps her hand in both of his. “That’s definitely not good! It’s super lucky that I got to you in time! Kuroo was telling me not to beat up people, and I  _know_  that, but did you see the guy’s face? It’s like he was born for it!”

“That’s very violent, Koutarou.”

“The mafia  _are_  violent, though.”

She’s laughing now, struggling a little to keep it as unnoticeable as possible. Bokuto beams with pride and he feels like his heart’s going to burst out of his chest. He wasn’t kidding when he said that her smile was super pretty, because it’s the only thing that keeps him going on really bad days.

“Yes, I suppose that’s the point of the mafia, isn’t it?”

Bokuto can feel himself melting. “Yeah, and it means I get to protect you, so I guess it evens out!”

“Thank you, Kou-chan.”

She glances quickly from side to side first, and then tiptoes to press a quick but searing kiss against Bokuto’s lips. He’s still stunned by the time she’s given him a shy wave as she walks off to update her manager, burning the image of her smouldering gaze into his brain forever.

Kuroo slings an arm around Bokuto’s shoulders.

“You have it bad, Bo.”

Bokuto thinks that he can have it up, down, sideways and all the way to next Sunday if it means he can be with this woman for the rest of her life.

 

* * *

 

 

_[Busybody comments: The next installment arrives! (I guess a side effect of dating the mafia is that they’re not very scary anymore.) I’m not sure if anyone’s interested, but I used the Han River in Seoul, Korea as inspiration for this date location. It’s a very beautiful place!]_

 

It’s 11:11pm, and the wind is a bit too chilly for a November night.  **Akaashi**  places a hand over his girlfriend’s and squeezes lightly to test if she’s warm enough.

“Is the blanket enough?” He has to ask anyway, just to make sure.

“Mhmm,” she pauses, peeking up at him cheekily from underneath a rather thick blanket, “but if I say no, will you join me under this?”

He can’t help but smile at her fondly for that.

“I’m still in a suit. It’ll get wrinkled and I might fall asleep.”

“Then sleep! Are you in a hurry to go somewhere after our date, Keiji?”

This makes him sigh a little. She’s asking with such innocent eyes even though he’d told her beforehand. It had been a busy week, cleaning up the messes from a botched job, and Akaashi was usually sent on those cleanup missions. Being one of the more quiet and skilled members of his group, he was either sent on lengthy jobs or none at all for two months.

He doesn’t respond to her question, but only looks at her with a slightly exasperated expression and she laughs a little, the warm chuckle muffled underneath cashmere.

“I know, I’ll stop teasing you. Reporting back to the boss and everything, right?”

He just nods. “Sorry.”

She hums quietly. “It’s okay. This is a nice time, and it’s a nice place for a date. I don’t mind.”

Akaashi just gazes out at the river in front of them silently. From his spot on the grassy hill, he sees the couples going on romantic walks along the paved riverbank at this time of night and he feels a small pang of longing for that freedom.

“You’re still feeling bad, aren’t you?” she asks.

Nothing.

“How about this,” she puts her hand over his this time and uses it to pull herself upright to sit next to him, “if you buy me one of those meat buns from the food stand over there, I’ll forgive you.” She pauses to think for a second. “I’m throwing in a kiss with that deal. Does that sound okay?”

He squeezes her fingers one last time before getting up.

“Yes.”

\- - -

She was right, it was a nice place. Akaashi allows himself to feel a little bit pleased as he lines up for the meat bun (there was a surprising amount of people at this stand, he wonders if this is a tourist hotspot). Even though they’re not the only couple at this time of night on a Friday to have a mini-picnic by the river, her smile was just as bright as if he had suggested that they book a week long trip to Paris.

Had he really been neglecting her so much lately?

“Two meat buns please, and no extra sauce, thank you.”

It’s then he sees it. There’s a tall figure by the silhouette of his girlfriend- too tall for it to be a girl- and she was slowly folding into herself, backing up and the blanket discarded onto the grass.

Akaashi is usually a calm man, but right now he could break this stall down and he would not care.

“That’ll be seven-twe- hey!” A ten dollar bill is slapped into the vendor’s hand and Akaashi grabs the bag and marches over as fast as he can.

The first thing he does is drop the bag onto their mat and physically spin her out of the man’s reach. She lands into his chest with a small ‘oof’, but she’s quiet. Akaashi has to remind himself to relax his grip on her wrist.

“Please leave.”

“She’s yours?” Akaashi suppresses an urge to hit the man.

“I’m her boyfriend, yes. It’s highly inappropriate to corner any ladies at this time of night, so I suggest you-”

“You’re Akaashi.”

The man’s tone had changed, and Akaashi stops mid-sentence in surprise.

“Hard to mistake that characteristic stare,” offered the man. “You put one of my family in hospital a few days ago.”

Without Akaashi noticing, the man had leaned forwards a lot more and had been peering at his face. This is not good. He has enemies, sure, but he wasn’t expecting them to recognize him, let alone interrupt a date at near 12am. This man might be angry. He does not want his girlfriend near anyone angry.

“I’m sorry about that. It’s my job.”

Fighting in public would probably get someone arrested, so Akaashi tries very hard not to run. It would be useless, his girlfriend wouldn’t be able to keep up and this man would probably chase after them. His gaze doesn’t soften for a second.

The man relaxes his stance, and leans backwards. Akaashi’s surprised, but he doesn’t match him..

“I get it. I’ll just have to put one of yours in the next room, eh?” His eyes slide over to regard Akaashi’s girlfriend instead. She’s no longer against his chest, her eyes bright and furious at this man. He chuckles. “Shame about the girl. Didn’t expect to run into a cutie on the way back from work. Right, miss?”

She doesn’t say anything, but she straightens her spine. Even though she probably wouldn’t be able to do anything against him, Akaashi can’t help but think that she’s rather beautiful like this.

“Leave,” he repeats.

“Alright, alright.” The guy holds up his hands in surrender and back away, staring at them all the while. His stare is matched with two sets of narrowed eyes until he’s disappeared behind a large set of bushes a good distance away.

There’s still a tense silence for a while, until Akaashi shatters it smoothly.

“I’m afraid your buns are a bit cold now.”

He doesn’t know what he expected; his girlfriend relaxes in his hold, quirks an eyebrow, and grins, grabbing his hands and placing them over her butt.

“Warm them up for me?”

“Not in public.” He let’s her go and walks toward their abandoned ‘nest’. Her snickering can still be heard from behind him.

Quietly, he shakes the blanket free of any dirt and slips underneath it, shoes and all.

“Coming?”

Her expression is one of surprise, and he lets a small, satisfied smile slip across his features. She joins him wordlessly within seconds.

“Were you afraid?” he asks her softly when she’s comfortably tucked into his side.

“Not after you got here,” she admits, “I mean, he’s hardly going to be able to lay a hand on me with my mafia boyfriend in the way.”

“You know, the mafia are dangerous too.”

“I guess I’m lucky to have one on my side then, hmm?”

He doesn’t answer. He just kisses her. 

 

* * *

 

 

 _[Busybody comments: Life is tough when you’re the civilian daughter of a mafia boss. What life isn’t, however, is boring. Just for clarification, a cleaner isn’t a janitor in this story, but people sent to murder other people so that there are no witnesses! What can I say, I love my death._ _Enjoy!]_

 

The first time the family found out about his girlfriend,  **Iwaizumi**  had to live through two weeks of continuous wolf whistles and congratulations and all round annoyance. It’s now around two years in, and still, every time she comes to visit or pop by for greetings, there’s still a small celebration in the hallway.

“I think you’ve become their mascot,” he tells her. He throws an accusing glance at his colleagues before he steps outside first, holding a hand out to support her.

“But I’m from a different family,” she laughs.

“I know.” Iwaizumi quietly links his fingers through hers and they walk in measured paces along the pavement.

“Not to mention that I’m actually not involved with the family business.”

He shrugs. “Nobody seems to care. You’re like… the mascot for the mafia? There might be an alliance forming just for you.”

“How very shady, Hajime-kun.” Her eyes are twinkling a little. “Should I have some guns strapped to my thigh?”

He most certainly does not think she should. Her thighs look far better without traces of hyper violence wrapping around them, he knows because he had checked them himself this morning.

He tells her so, and watches with slight pleasure as a soft tinge of pink slides up her neck.

They’re a good distance from his base now, and the streets are beginning to narrow as he takes them through lesser traveled routes. He doesn’t believe in being ‘too safe’, and if this is his assignment, he’ll do his damned best.

“Is your father being overprotective again this afternoon?” He asks idly.

“You know it. It’s just a typical trip to pick up some papers, but I guess he thinks I’m going across the country.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t comment on that. It’s not his place.

“At least,” she continues, “I’m glad that it’s you that he’s requested for this instead of anyone else.”

He has to smile at that. “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“You should, because he’s not going to hire from another family a second time,” she laughs again.

In hindsight, he shouldn’t have taken this so lightly. This wasn’t an afternoon date after all, this was a legitimate concern that warranted hired bodyguards for her, and this time, he messed up.

He hears the rapid footsteps before the echoes of her laughter even disappear, and he manages to shove her against the wall and out of harm’s way just in time for a knife to whiz past his cheek. He glances at her worriedly, and knows that she’s realized that she’s laughed too loudly, to carefree, and it’s attracted unwanted attention.

Iwaizumi hears the rough sound of metal against brick from his left. There’s just one man, dressed in darker navy, and he’s spinning the small throwing knife around his index finger looking as if he had all the time in the world.

He probably did, because Iwaizumi and his girlfriend were in such a terrible spot that they probably wouldn’t be able to escape in a hurry. Iwaizumi tries a different approach.

“You can get arrested for attacking a civilian, you know.”

The man barely blinks. “Civilian?”

“The girl. You should really research your targets.”

“But I have? Iwaizumi Hajime, 23, one of the few university graduates in your group and also dating ____-chan here. Oh look, I even have your bust size!”

Iwaizumi hears the ‘oh shit’ behind him before he has time to process any information. There’s something not quite right, when his girlfriend is actively stepping in front of him with a slightly protective stance and she’s peering at throwing-knife-guy with growing enlightenment.

“Yaba-chan?! Don’t tell me you followed us here!”

“Of course!” Less shame could not be found. “Why track when you can just tail?”

“You know this guy?” Iwaizumi growls.

“Yes,” she’s almost completely relaxed now, leaning casually against his chest, “he’s my ex-boyfriend. Meet Yahaba Shigeru, he’s a cleaner for my dad.”

Iwaizumi does the exact opposite of relax. He can’t seem to decide what pisses him off more- the fact that her ex had thrown a knife at his head, or that wink he just shot her being light years away from platonic.

“Don’t throw things at my boyfriend, Yaba-chan!”

“What? Don’t be angry at me- it’s your uncle that sent me! You should have known being the family idol wouldn’t be easy with a boyfriend outside the group.”

“Hey- I never asked to be! It’s not my fault I’m the only girl!”

“Then it’s not my fault either.” He clearly looks far too pleased for someone who is still in the middle of an assassination attempt. “Besides, you’re lucky it’s me. Someone else might have actually taken this job seriously, y’know? I had to throw  _something_ , a man’s gotta report back after all.”

“Couldn’t you just have jogged around the complex instead of bothering us then?” interrupts Iwaizumi. The other two blink at him for a few seconds, almost as if forgetting that he was there in the first place. A bit annoying, he thinks, since he’s the target after all.

Yahaba walks forwards swiftly and cups the lady’s chin with two delicate fingers. Iwaizumi twitches.

“But then I wouldn’t be able to tease my cute little teddy bear here, hmm?”

“Oh my God. Yahaba Shigeru, that was  _one time_.”

“It was so cute though!”

“If you two are  _quite done_.”

Iwaizumi Hajime is very, very pissed off. His girlfriend falls quiet, but Yahaba glances up into his face and laughs nervously, backing off a little.

“Hey, hey, I’m just kidding here. No need to go full on alpha on me.”

Iwaizumi mimes the motion of chin-touching, and Yahaba sighs grudgingly. He doesn’t say much else, only throwing a meaningful look at the still silent girl, sneaks in another wink and vaults up the nearest balcony to slip away before Iwaizumi can actually break his neck.

When they finally resume their walk after Iwaizumi tugs on his girlfriend’s arm, it’s full with an uncomfortable tension. Mostly from Iwaizumi, because his girlfriend can be a little shit sometimes and he doesn’t have to look at her to know that she’s smugly waiting for his possessiveness to kick in.

She’s right, it does.

“You see that asshole on a daily basis?”

“To be fair, he does work in the same building I live in.”

“Feel free to move out.”

“Then I’d have to pay rent,” she starts laughing and Iwaizumi can feel his headache doing a merry dance. He doesn’t say anything else.

She stops him with a gentle hand and moves to face him, pressing a thumb down between his furrowed brows.

“I don’t have any feelings for him, Hajime. Also, he’s the one who broke up with me, so you don’t have to worry about anything on his end either.”

Surprised, his jaw slackens a little.

“Who in their right mind would break up with you?”

“Sane men,” she grins at him. “He’s too shallow, and I was too much of a handful, so we just sort of went on a small challenge to see who’d break up with the other first. I won.”

When Iwaizumi laughs, it’s a rich, deep bass that makes her blush down to the tips of her toes.

“You’re so weird.”

“I know, right?”

He pushes them forwards so that they’re walking again. It’s a peaceful, leisurely pace and he places her arm to link through his own.

“I meant it when I said you should move out, though.”

“And I meant it when I said I’d have to pay rent, and I don’t wanna.”

He takes in a deep breath. “You won’t if you move in with me.”

“Shouldn’t that question be more romantic? Like, at a candlelit dinner or something, or staring out at the stars at night.”

“I’m not proposing, though.”

She scoffs quietly in reply, but falls silent after that. Iwaizumi would be worried, but he can tell from the way she sneaks her fingers through his and grips them so very tightly, he already has his answer. 

 

* * *

 

 

_[Busybody comments: I am a sadist, and angsty, serious Oikawa is totally my jam. I… may have deviated a bit from the original prompt (and I’m sorry!), but I hope you enjoy all the same.]_

 

“So you’re saying that you won’t stay with me unless I become the boss.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all, Tooru, don’t twist my words.”

“I’m not twisting anything! I can recognize an ultimatum when I hear one.”

“ _Jesus_ , it’s not an ultimatum- it’s a choice that you have to make and there are repercussions!”

This isn’t the first time  **Oikawa**  has had this exact same argument with his girlfriend. The term ‘girlfriend’ being used very loosely most days. They’re stuck on a never ending see-saw between more-than-dating, and barely-dating. How is it that the more you try to marry someone, the more likely it is that they’re going to break up with you? It’s wearing her out, this constant tug-of-war, and it grates on Oikawa’s nerves when she pesters him so. He understands her point, but at the same time he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to. All he’s ever wanted was a fun, carefree relationship with a girl that shared his sense of humour, and then he got this instead- a romance that was hard, a simmering mess of embers and even though they’ve had their share of happy days, it’s like there is always something else, another problem to solve.

“What has my future got to do with us, anyway? What does any of this matter to you?” His voice is fading fast into anger, and she hears it. In fact, she matches it.

“Why does this matter? Have you ever thought that not everything I do is for my sake?” Oh god, he can see the tell-tale sparkle of moisture in her eyes and he can’t bring himself to meet her furious gaze, “I care so  _goddamn_  much Tooru, because I care about  _you_  and your stupid mug!”

_“Then stop pretending you know anything about what makes me happy!”_

He’s not sure if he regrets saying it. He can see her face, her soft, kind face twisted- broken, and he never expected being in love to hurt like this. But he knows he needed to say it, to shout it at her, to shatter her before he’d be satisfied.

She sounds just as broken as she looks.

“Okay. So I shouldn’t have bothered to make you happy.” Her whisper is so bitter Oikawa can taste it in his mouth. “Okay.”

The last thing he thinks as he watches the door to his office close behind her is that her eyes shine even brighter when she’s in pain.

\- - -

It’s been two weeks, and the next time he sees her is with another man.

It’s nothing dramatic, and honestly it doesn’t look like anything. They’re just standing outside the building where she works, a very respectable distance between them and Oikawa faintly recognizes him as a pretty high up executive from a rival family. He lets out a weak chuckle as he watches them. If he didn’t know her better, he’d think that she had a kink for men involved in illegal activities.

No, the reason why he feels like he stabbing someone (preferably himself) isn’t because she’s with another guy. The guy isn’t even relevant, because all Oikawa can feel right now is an overwhelming surge of regret and self-loathing.

When was the last time she had smiled like that with him?

That dorky, crooked smile that she always had when he’d make lame jokes. When they’d watch crappy alien movies together on his sofa-bed. When they’d drag each other out in the rain and dance to really dumb children songs. When he’d finally decided to not be such a lame, lame man and had kissed her on his balcony, bathed under the night sky, and asked her out.

His feet come to a decision long before he does.

“Tooru?” He hears her behind him, but he’s a bit too busy trying to figure out what the hell he’s doing to reply.

“Tooru? The great Oikawa Tooru?”

The other man doesn’t seem bothered at all that holes are being burned into his skin by the heir to the Seijou group. In fact, he smiles, so genuinely friendly that Oikawa wants to carve it off his face.

“It’s nice to meet you,” says the guy, “you’re rather famous around these parts.”

“I know,” is all Oikawa offers in return.

“What brings you to this neck of the woods? It’s rather proper around here for the likes of us, isn’t it?”

“…Walking.”

He doesn’t want to look at her, not just yet. He’s too distracted to pretend to be happy, but also too distracted to deal with his problems. She would always be his great, beautiful distraction.

The silence is getting a little awkward, and the guy breaks it with some more cheer and congeniality.

“I take it you know this lovely lady here? I accidentally ran into her cup of tea, and it turns out she knows a fascinating amount of tea spots around.”

“Fascinating,” Oikawa echoes. He wonders how many years it will take for this guy to take the hint that the glare is not an invitation to keep talking.

Suddenly, there’s a hand at his elbow that he hasn’t noticed sneak up on him, and he’s saved from embarrassing himself even further when he hears his girlfriend speak.

“I’m afraid we must be going, or we’ll be late to our appointment.” She’s every bit as gracious as the man is, and he accepts the dismissal with a graceful bow and a beaming smile at her. Oikawa is still mildly traumatized by himself by the time the man is gone from sight.

“Let’s go home, Tooru.”

\- - -

He’d never really considered the fact that she’d leave him for someone else. She’s never given him a reason to, and he had stopped playing around with that particular fire after their first year together. It had felt so… natural, and finite, that they would be stuck with each other for the rest of their lives. Oikawa supposes that it’s like him to even have believed it. Selfish to the very end.

She’s made a small space for herself next to the pile of space magazines on the sofa opposite his bed. She looks very uncomfortable, and he wonders if it’s because of the lack of space, or because of him.

“I wasn’t stalking you or anything.”  _What a great start._

She laughs a little, and his heart immediately loses two stone. He sits up straighter.

“I know.”

“And I… I didn’t mean what I said. You know how to make me happy.” He looks up at her. “ _You_  make me happy.”

“I know,” she says again.

“I guess it just felt like I couldn’t make both you and I happy at the same time.”

She’s quiet, and he falls quiet too. The noise of his digital clock ticking seems much louder than before, and he can hear her inhale to speak.

“The silly thing is, Tooru,” she’s smiling now, and although it’s at her knees and it’s a bit sad still, Oikawa feels like he could cry, “I was worried about the same thing.”

He sniffs. Okay, he might be crying a little.

“I’m happy when you’re happy.” She’s rubbing at her eyes too. “I can’t help it because you look so bright and beautiful when you smile. Even when I’m mad at you.”

“I’m sorry I tried to force you into choosing. I don’t know what’s best for you, but… I do know  _you_ ,” she finally adds.

“I’d regret leaving Seijou behind,” he offers, and she just nods. “So you were right.”

“I wasn’t. Whatever you choose is right, Tooru, no matter what I guess.”

“Okay.” He wants to go up and wrap his arms around her, to make sure that she’s still here for him, but he can’t find it in his heart to stop watching her smile for a second. “So anything I choose is the right choice?”

“Mhmm.”

“Then I choose you.”

He tries not to giggle stupidly, but it’s very hard not to when her face falls completely deadpan.

“Oikawa Tooru, did you just propose to me with a Pokemon reference.”

“Yeah,” he sniggers.

“Okay.”

He blinks, eyes wide and filled with hope. This was so unromantic, so stupid, and so definitely the best thing that he’s ever heard.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

He starts crying in earnest now, and even though he knows he’s an ugly crier, he can’t help the massive, relieved grin on his face because maybe this time, finally, he’ll be happy.

“Okay!”

 

* * *

 

 

 _[Busybody comments: She’s got nerves of steel, this lady of his. I wonder what her backstory must be? Still, if you’ve got the guts to date Kuroo you’re probably made of stern stuff anyway._ _This has sure been a ride! A long, 7k ride that got more and more serious, but it was fun nonetheless. Thanks for your patience, and for the final time, I hope you enjoy. :)]_

 

“ _Fuck_ , that hurts…”

 **Kuroo'** s vision is still blurry around the edges, and clumsily, he pushes himself off the ground. The back of his head feels like it’s been split open with a crowbar. He touches it tenderly and pulls back to find blood. A lot of blood.

He looks up, and isn’t too surprised to find no windows. There’s just the dusty, orange light bulb in the middle of the room, and he has no idea how long he’s been lying here.

“This was supposed to be simple…” he mutters angrily to himself. Just a quick recon before heading back home for the week, but he’s on the floor unconscious instead. The boss would not be pleased.

The door swings open easily when he pushes against it.

There’s nobody in the hallway, and all he can hear is the sound of the door closing and his own breathing. It’s a lot cleaner outside- fluorescent lights instead of that horrid orange glow in that room, and the floor is a clean linoleum.

It looks like it’s just been cleaned. Good, that means that people still use this place.

His combat boots make almost no noise as he makes his way forwards. He walks like a cat, body lean and taut, stretched out to its limits to maximize his spatial awareness. He has never been in such a situation before, and the tension draws out the best in  him.

Too bad all the doors are locked.

Kuroo bangs his foot angrily against the wall and lets the loud clanging echo replace his desire to scream at something. There’s nothing for him to hear down this endless corridor, and even though there is a door every few meters, they offer him no escape.

He drops to the balls of his feet in a tired squat, unwilling to touch the wet floor with his pants.

Wait, the water.

It’s flowing in small trickles to the left. The flow is steady, and there’s no sign of it thinning out. Which means that there has to be a constant source. He’s been walking the wrong way this whole time- everything here is on an incline, and Kuroo quickly turns around and marches back the way he came.

It’s a single door at the very end. No different from all the others he’s tried opening, but the water is most certainly coming from underneath the crack. He’s not quite sure what he expects on the other side. An exit, perhaps, another corridor, a group of civilians, maybe a group of the people who threw him here.

“What the-  _Tetsu_!”

He certainly did not expect  _this_.

He’s greeted with two, burly men grabbing at his arms and before he knows it, he’s taking another blow to the head. He can vaguely register the splash of water at his ankles; at least he was right. They’re forcing him into a chair already, and Kuroo’s not sure he can even remain upright with the ringing in his ears, even though he _has_ to.

“Shit, you’re bleeding so much…” He thinks he might be hallucinating her voice now if he’s hearing it here.

A fist connects solidly with his jaw and he feels his face being slammed to the left.

“Stop fucking punching him, you piece of shit!”

“Are you sure you should be talking to us like that, little lady?”

The slithery tone of that voice has Kuroo blinking the blood away from his eyes. He knows this voice- their groups were supposed to be allies for the next three months, but he’s hovering over Kuroo like a predator and  the feeling of betrayal is overtaken by something even uglier.  _Jesus_ , they have the love of his life- so  _beautiful_  and fierce in her rage- tied to a fucking pillar.

He spits on the man’s shoes.

“Can’t even deal with me without kidnapping civilians, huh?”

“Civilian?” The man’s laugh chills him to the bone. He doesn’t want to know the meaning behind it. “I think she forfeited that right the moment you slept with her, don’t you?”

Kuroo’s stare could freeze fire, and his tone slice through steel.

“Have some fucking respect.”

“For what? For this?” The man starts to walk  up to his girlfriend, still struggling in her bonds and watching with so much defiance, each step the man takes.

When he runs his fingers underneath the tattered remains of her shirt and presses a kiss to her ear, Kuroo aches to rip this man limb from limb and feel absolutely no remorse.

She’s still following his every movement- heck, she hasn’t even flinched, meeting those hungry, steely eyes impassively.

“Sometimes I think you’re much better suited to be in the mafia then I am,” Kuroo manages to chuckle.

She shifts to look at him, a smile tickling the edges of her lips.

“You know I deal poorly with authority.”

Her face is grabbed by a veined hand, wrenching her head sideways into a brutal kiss. The man’s other hand is tightening around her left breast, bruising enough to tell her to shut the hell up.

She hasn’t stopped looking at Kuroo. He follows her faint smile with one of his own.

“I don’t know how you always have so much faith in me,” he breathes, and he can almost hear her reply in his head.

_Because I’m here. You don’t have to worry about me now. Let loose, Tetsu._

So he does.

The bleeding doesn’t stop him, and neither does the dizziness. He wrests his arms out from the thugs’ grips with as much speed as he could muster and slams the chair into their faces. He grabs one of their guns and makes quick work of their brains.

It takes Kuroo at least three times the number of shots he would usually need because he’s honestly surprised that he’s even standing upright, but the job’s done. He can see his own reflection in the red of the water at his ankles.

“Alright,” he flicks the magazine out to check for bullets, “it’s your turn.”

The man is crumpled on the floor, blood still leaking profusely from a thigh. Kuroo gives him about two minutes more of consciousness, but it won’t take that long. He doesn’t break eye contact as he unties the rope at his girlfriend’s wrists.

“You won’t- you can’t,” the man grits out. Kuroo only raises an eyebrow, so he tries again. “They’re going to hunt you down if you kill me. Do you even want to sleep soundly at night?”

Kuroo gives him the special treatment, one through each thigh. He pats the man’s cheek soundly.

“That’s your femoral arteries gone. Five minutes, I’d say.”

“And y’know what,” he grins through the man’s pained moans, “I think I’ll sleep just fine.”

\- - -

It only takes them a few minutes to scramble up to the surface after that. Surprisingly, his girlfriend had wordlessly pointed out the exit route and they were met with no obstruction through it.

“They didn’t bother blindfolding me,” she shrugs when Kuroo asks, “just walked me right in.”

“Serious? And they call themselves professionals?”

“‘Professional’? You’re not actually a hitman, Testu, no matter how much cooler you think it sounds.”

“Ah, but would  _you_  think I’m cooler, that’s the question.”

They’re still filthy, covered in blood, in mangled clothes and probably lost in an abandoned building somewhere, but neither of them care when they slide their mouths together into a burning kiss.

They have break apart for air sometime later and Kuroo’s grin turns sly as he watches the string of saliva stretch between them. It earns him a small smack on the arm, but she’s laughing, so he keeps her in his hold.

“You’re a dork.”

“I’m a dork,” he agrees. “But am I a cool dork?”

“You managed to get us out of that just now, so,” she winks at him cheekily, “you get to be the coolest dork.”

Kuroo’s proud ‘yes!’ echoes through the building and they walk out into the dim light of the evening, fingers laced together as tightly as ever.


	11. Tsukishima gets into a fight with his girlfriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> tsukki getting into like a really really heated argument with his s/o and she leaves the scene and after tsukki calms down he goes looking for her but cant find her and it starts to get dark and stuff and he starts to like really freak out coz no one knows where she is and you can make up the ending ??  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: You may regret giving me the reins regarding the ending by the time you finish this. This was actually very natural to write, and just as a note- this is all from Tsukishima’s perspective; what goes on through his head and such. The danger of the unreliable narrator is very real. Please don’t kill me after this, and enjoy!_

Tsukishima knew that he didn’t have the best temper. Probably everyone who had ever been in contact with him would realize that his temper is really, really crap at the best of times, and he’d always operated on the assumption that it would be okay, That he could say whatever he thought because honestly, those people who took offense or couldn’t take the truth like an adult shouldn’t be around him anyway. It was a waste of time.

He really didn’t mean to say that to her. She knows too- even the prettiest, sweetest girl wouldn’t be able to get away with not experiencing his vitriol one time or another, but he had just been so incredibly angry, and it just… came out. Shouted out, in one rage-filled hiss that contained so much venom that it could kill a man. And he’d just gone and said that to her face.

She’s gone now, having been struck dumb from the sheer animosity in his words- it was like they were tailor made for her. Knowing him, they probably were. He’d been left sitting alone on the steps of his back garden, feeling as numb as she was in pain, and he’d done nothing but watch as she got up and strode out of his house.

“Are you guys going to the combini?”

“No mom. Just going out for a walk.” He hoped he didn’t look as dead as he sounded.

Idly, he wondered if Akiteru ever got into fights like these with his girlfriend. He laughed at himself under his breath as he stuck his hands in his pockets and kept his gaze on the floor. ‘Fights’ indicated that each side had an equal chance of winning. If she’d figuratively punched him with bare fists, then he had pulled out that knife from under his belt and dug it in between her ribs when she was vulnerable. The worst thing was, he didn’t even move to chase after her, or to hold her back. He hadn’t even changed expressions when he watched hers shatter.

He kicked a stray pebble out of the way as he wandered through the winding streets of Miyagi. They seemed to be as unending and endless as his trek to find his girlfriend. The terrible thing was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be out here. Sure, it was probably bad for a girl to be wandering around on her own and… as a semi-decent person he still wanted to make sure that she wasn’t upset anymore, but truthfully, he didn’t regret saying all that. The truth was out. Perhaps he should have thought before insulting her outright, and he definitely shouldn’t have used those words, but the first feeling that he felt when it all spilled out wasn’t horror, shock or regret. It was an overwhelming feeling of catharsis, to be finally able to say what he really thought without having to tiptoe around everything.

He really was a terrible person.

But then again, she knew that too. Just for a moment of satisfaction, of release, he’d driven away the one person who was in love with him because of everything that he was. He’d opened up to her like he never had with anyone else, not even Yamaguchi, and the amount of times where he thought that maybe the world wasn’t as rigged as he imagined were all because of her. If someone like him could have someone like her, then surely…

Well, he supposed he was looking for her now. Something about better late than never, he hoped.

It had probably been what, two hours now? Not that he expected her to be, but he’d gone to all her usual haunts, even her house and her neighbour’s house, and she was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t like she just left anywhere either, they hadn’t seen her all day. With each rejection he felt more and more desperate. It was getting close to nine in the evening, and he’d already hung up on his mom twice after she’d called him asking him about dinner, but he wasn’t sure he could digest anything knowing that she’d more or less vanished off the face of the earth. For now, his world was small enough, and she’d just disappeared from it.

He really wasn’t a superstitious person, but he could appreciate cold, hard irony when it slapped him in the face. He just prayed that if he found her, she wouldn’t be gone from his life either.

Even though he’s not sure if it’d even be helpful, he texts Yamaguchi first. The question was short and quick, but as per usual, the reply was as long and concerned as ever. It brought a little smile to his face, tinged with frustration yes, but it just reminds him of the last time he’d received something like this from her. With the sky so dark, and his feet so sore, it seemed like a lifetime ago.

Despite the fact that he was the one searching, Tsukishima wondered if he wasn’t the one who was lost.

Without any delay, he ploughed through the rest of his contact list. It was a short, sad representation of his social circle, but they were all far more reliable than he was at this rate- they weren’t the one out here looking to fix a problem that they’d started after all.

It was pushing ten, and the thin sweater he had on wasn’t really cutting it. He wondered if she was somewhere outside, huddled into herself, just as cold as he was. He wondered if she was still angry. He wondered if  _he_  was still angry. For all the good it made him feel earlier, the heat from his rage wasn’t warming him up now.

The street was dark enough that he noticed the brightness of his blinking phone from the reflected light against concrete.

 _From: Suga-san [21.54]_  please come over to my place, tsukishima-kun

Beggars couldn’t be choosers. If it had taken her almost four hours to even want to see him at another guy’s house, then so be it. Tsukishima rubbed at his eyes tiredly, and set off with a blend of relief, apprehension, and dread.

Suga had opened the door almost the instant Tsukishima’s fingers left the doorbell. Neither of them moved for a short second, and Tsukishima was the first one to break eye contact, hanging his head guiltily. He still had a massive hurdle to overcome, and he wasn’t sure that he could take the pitying, knowing and disappointed look on Suga’s shadowed face. It was filled with everything he wasn’t sure he was ready to face, from another person he had let down. Without any sense of false bravado, Tsukishima chose to run away from it, offering only a muttered ‘sorry for the intrusion’ as poor compensation. The door was held open for him nonetheless, and he felt the comforting (or condemning) press of his senior’s hand on his shoulder before he slipped inside.

He didn’t realize until too late, what with his gaze fixed determinedly on the ground, that there were a pair of small socked feet waiting for him at the end of the corridor. He felt her breathing before he realized it was her, could feel the wave of tension between them, and finally, he looked up.

It was the same, glistening gaze that he had fallen in love with. Her breaths brittle and shallow, hands by her sides with an almost broken relaxation, and then, she smiled at him. It looked far sadder than any tears.

“Hi.”


	12. College AU where Suga's friend has financial issues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> this might be weird but college au where suga's best friend has financial issues nd family financial issues she needs to keep up with and she's actually like a prostitute or something along those lines and suga finds out ? and his reaction ? ? ? sugamama would so do something about this fickle issue omg okay im out  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Sugamama sure gives some firm love. This story is mostly about hope, and even though not everything’s going to be dandy and fixed with a snap of the finger, the first step is to let your loved ones help you. You’re always more loved than you realize._

The first time he saw her, he didn’t think much of it. It had most certainly surprised him when he’d noticed that his best friend whom he knew had told him that she was busy that afternoon, had appeared arm-in-arm with an older man in front of an expensive restaurant. Still, Suga didn’t think that he was in any place to judge. Their next meeting was a little bit awkward, but he did his best to push the memory out of his head and decide to not ask any questions. The second time, however, was more a matter of principle.

Now Suga was an undoubtedly good student; he could read well and had very good interpersonal skills. So when he watched, from his seat on the docked bus, her leave a downtown hotel with a different middle aged man two days later, he was certain that it wasn’t his eyesight, nor any sort of misunderstanding on his part. Not when he’d just received a text from her saying that she was busy with helping out her family this weekend. The rest of the bus ride had almost burned a hole through his brain from all the overthinking, and he’d missed his house by two stops that night.

He tried hard not to feel suspicious and quashed the mild sting of betrayal from her lie. Surely, she was a grown woman, not to mention with a burning sense of loyalty and would  _not_  lie to Suga without a very good reason. Unfortunately, when he found himself watching her critically from the corner of his eye during Developmental Biology the following monday morning, he figured that his coping method wasn’t working out very well.

It was so tempting to hold her back for a few minutes after class to ask her, or to catch her at her usual spot in the coffee shop after school, or even to corner her in her apartment at night if necessary. But the telltale of bags zipping and chairs creaking signaled the end of a fruitless class period, and all Suga managed was a casual wave of his hand as a ‘see you later’ when she blundered into the crowd of people in the aisle. Almost like she didn’t want to meet his eyes.

Suga watched as she was swept by the sea of sleep-deprived adults, and admitted to himself that it was getting a little bit ridiculous. She probably knew she wasn’t fooling anyone- least of all Sugawara Koushi, best friend and king of perceptive advice-giving, so all Suga could ask himself was ‘why was she doing this?’

Dinner later that night didn’t provide much of a reprieve from his stress, not even with Daichi’s rare presence at the restaurant, and Oikawa had pointed out Suga’s distress at least three times in two hours. His instincts were right, and Oikawa was right too- it wasn’t doing anything to just sit and stew in his worry. Suga suppressed the urge to shoot a (slightly desperate) ‘ _why can’t you meet my eyes anymore?_ ’ text to her in the spur of the moment and ordered another bottle of sake for his peace of mind.

 

* * *

 

Suga’s patience was rewarded, as always. Akaashi had handed over his keys to the apartment with only an accepting nod the next day, and Suga had let himself in quietly. A small, nasty voice in his head had him wondering if she’d even be in the apartment, if she was so busy with strange middle aged men, but that thought disappeared as quickly as it had come. There wasn’t much they didn’t know about each other after so many years of steadfast friendship, and no matter how much Suga valued honesty, he knew that she did just as much, and that made his worry intensify. For someone as warm and steady as her to have to don such a look of shame every time their eyes met, he dreaded what he’d hear if he asked.

It was a welcome change, finally being able to actually see her expressions from a head held high. There was a loaded silence between them, and Suga understood that he didn’t need to say anything. Her tired, shaky smile called for his forgiveness, and he quietly slid into the chair next to hers by the kitchen table and together they sat in peaceful silence.

“Sorry, Koushi. I know you’ve been worried about me.”

“Mmmm,” he unthreaded his fingers and leaned backwards in his seat. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

She took a deep breath. He watched as she turned her head and looked right past him at a wall.

“My grandmother’s in hospital. Early stage cancer diagnosis, they said. I found out last month.”

Suga bowed his head and moved closer. “Have you been dealing with this alone this whole time?”

Her eyes remained fixed and she nodded. “I just… wasn’t ready. To tell anyone. To face the truth of it.”

“The thing is,” she continued, “they asked me. If I wanted to help my grandma the best I could. Of course I did-” her voice cracked a little and Suga reached out and clutched her hand tightly in his. “So everyone pooled money to put her in a private hospital, signing up for expensive treatments and everything and I… well, I’m not as smart as you, Koushi, so I don’t have a scholarship or anything, just my parents.”

He could hear the thickness in her voice, and gently, he leaned forwards to cradle her in his arms. It took a few seconds, but her rigidity snapped and Suga clutched her to him, sobbing broken, dry heaves into his chest. He could feel his own heart breaking.

“Are you… for tuition…?”

“…Escort. I-I spend my days with men who pay for my time and… and sometimes they ask for more and….  _God_ , I can’t say no because it’s an extra 100 that I need for next week.” She clutched his shirt tighter and he could feel her start to shake underneath his touch. “I  _fucking hate it_. I just… feel so  _disgusting_  when they start to touch me or call me things and the thing I hate most is how empty I have to feel so I make it through the day. Koushi… I just… it’s been so difficult to not even feel like I’m  _whole_  enough to look at your smiling face anymore and pretend that everything’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Suga pressed, a hand rubbing furious circles against her back, “it’s definitely  _not_  okay, but like hell you’re going to be not okay all alone.”

She was still crying, trails of snot clung to the fabric of his shirt from her nose, but he pulled away from her, sitting her straight up. She met his eyes, and he stared firmly back into them. He’s never found her more brave and beautiful in his life.

“Even if this is something you feel like you need to carry all this by yourself, you’ve got another thing coming if you think we’re going to let you. I love you. Akaashi loves you. All your friends love you. Even Oikawa loves you, even though he’ll only admit it at gunpoint. The point is, we’re not abandoning you. We’re going to make your life as happy as it can be because that’s what we do for each other. Understood?”

She nodded, and Suga broke into a watery smile.

“That’s my girl.”

Suga grabbed a blanket from the couch nearby and bundled her into it. She still looked a bit shell-shocked, but her bright eyes followed his every movement with a little wonder, like she couldn’t really believe that he was here. Here for her. He grinned a little and gave her a peck on the forehead before making his way into her shared kitchen.

“We can get things sorted out for you later, but for now, you look like you’re in need for a good meal and some rest.”

It was a weak laugh, but she laughed all the same. It warmed his heart to hear the laughter he’d missed for almost several weeks now, and he tossed her one of his trademark brilliant smiles.

“One omurice coming right up! Don’t you dare move from that seat!”

 

* * *

 

September saw the final changes to her life. It had taken a whole, grueling and definitely humbling month when all her friends essentially called her a dummy, and then pooled together their efforts into making sure she got all her expenses and tuition covered. Even though her debt would probably span most of her youth now, she had a fighting chance of getting out of this in one piece. Besides, she had unexpectedly fallen in love with her new job that Iwaizumi had managed to snag her in the university coffee shop. It was a bit loud in there, what with a little bundle of orange energy bouncing about, but it was her haven, her saving grace.

Now, all that was left for their new flatmate to finish moving into their apartment.

“I don’t mind,” Akaashi had told her gently when she had first found out, “Bokuto-san’s been complaining for the longest time for us to get a place together. If you don’t mind having another person in the house, we thought that it would make rent easier for you if he just shared a room with me.”

He had looked a bit caught off guard when she had started wailing his name, but he had hugged her all the same.

It was late in the afternoon when all the new belongings had finally been shifted into the apartment. Boxes were strewn almost all over the wooden floor, and with Suga curled up right next to her, she watched peacefully from their pile of blankets on the couch as Bokuto and Kuroo started using household items as volleyballs.

“You’re going to be okay.” Suga murmured from behind her. She turned around slightly and felt her cheeks draw up into a matching grin. He looked at her with such earnestness that it made her feel like she could probably fly fifty feet into the air if that was what Suga believed she could do.

“Yeah,” she breathed out, “I’m going to be okay.” 


	13. Comforting Iwaizumi after losing to Karasuno

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hello! can i please request the reader comforting iwaizumi after their lost to karasuno?  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: He is a man of action and few words. I had a feeling that small actions and heartfelt conversations would heal him more than hugs ever could. Here’s to Iwaizumi and his passion for volleyball._

If Oikawa’s face was like the strike of lightning, then Iwaizumi’s would be the harsh crack of thunder. You had watched the match with the rest of the crowd and the gymnasium, and you found yourself at a loss for words and unable to approach any of the Seijou members when the match ended.

In fact, nobody could.

It wasn’t their first loss- they experienced loss almost every time they went up against Shiratorizawa, but this was their last match. As graduating seniors, this was their last chance to chase that fierce dream, the fuel that pumps through their veins every morning, day and night. They believed in themselves until the very end, and they had lost it all to a team that had barely cleared the preliminaries more than a few times.

You believed. You always believed. Although it was Seijou that you cheered for every time, it was Iwaizumi that you prayed for.

That evening, it took them even longer to come home. Oikawa lived a street away, so you waited outside your house, leaning against the wall that divided Iwaizumi’s place from yours, and did your best to appear as natural as possible. You watched as Iwaizumi gave Oikawa a half-hearted nod goodbye before walking the last stretch back to his house. He would have probably walked right past you if you hadn’t stepped forwards and placed a hand on his bag to hold him back.

He made a face that looked like he wasn’t sure if he should feel bitterness or determination. You smiled at him before he had to make a choice.

“Want to go for a walk, neighbour?”

He paused, watched you with tired eyes and when your smile didn’t falter, he let out a sigh and turned around.

“Sure.”

The park wasn’t far. Many an afternoon had been spent there frolicking about as children, hurling volleyballs at each others’ heads, but this evening the way there was quiet. You settled yourself on a kid’s swing, letting your shorter legs dangle a bit, and waited for Iwaizumi to plop himself into the one next to you, head falling into his open palms.

“I watched your match this morning.”

“Of course.” He barked out a small laugh, muffled from his hands.

“Are you angry at yourself, Hajime?”

There was a pregnant pause. You were looking straight ahead, but you could tell he was looking up too from the way his voice cleared.

“I’m not angry at anyone. Seijou did good today.”

You nodded. “It was a good fight.”

“We still lost.”

“I know. I saw. Karasuno did really good too.”

“We could have pushed ourselves more. Maybe we could have won.”

“Maybe,” you agreed.

He didn’t say anything else, so you filled in for him.

“But I think every team has its strengths and weaknesses. You lost today, but you can win tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Spring Inter-High was our last shot. We’re graduating. You are too, you know.”

“I’m still going to all your matches, Hajime. Don’t think you’ll be let off the hook.”

“ _We’re graduating_ ,” he looked at you incredulously, like he couldn’t believe that you were even having this inane conversation. It was okay though, the tight furrow of disappointment between his brows had lessened, giving way to more annoyance than anything, and that was enough for you.

You met his eyes, unwavering.

“Both you and Tooru are brilliant. If you think for a second that you’re going to stop playing volleyball after high school, you’re clearly deluded and then I’ll really have to follow you around and make sure the two of you don’t lose your minds.”

“Look, it’s different without the team-”

“-The team will improve along with you,” you interrupted him firmly. “They’re not going to forget the narcissistic, playboy setter and the ridiculously overpowered wing spiker. They’re going to get new members, and they’re going to build off what they’ve all learned with you two and then they’re  _going to nationals_.”

It seemed that you had struck him dumb. The two of you just sort of stared at each other for a good few minutes until Iwaizumi finally cracked a smile and laughed. Not one of his tired chuckles, but a genuine, deep, belly laugh that never failed to crack a grin onto your face.

“I guess I feel less shit now.”

“Good. Because you’re sure as hell going to make it onto the national team, you got it?”

“…And spend the rest of my youth with our rotten setter? Are you trying to kill me?”

“You know you love it. Can’t get rid of the two of us, you know.”

He matched your smile for a rare one of his own. The sky seemed a little lighter purple now, and Iwaizumi stood up from his seat. He held a hand out for you, and you grabbed it without hesitation, pulling yourself up.

The rest of the walk back was quiet once again, but Iwaizumi stood firm and tall next to you this time, an arm slung casually over your shoulders. The two of you matched strides all the way home.

 

* * *

 

“You really did play your best today. I’m sorry Seijou didn’t win.”

“I know. It’s okay. Thanks for walking with me.”

“Anytime.”


	14. Iwaizumi's in love with Oikawa's older sister

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> can i request scenario where iwaizumi is in love with oikawa older sister (that actually return his feeling but oblivious of his feeling and think he won't be interested on her since she's older and his best friend's sister)?  
> 

He supposes it’s as good a reason as any to stop hanging around the Oikawa household so much. The first time he catches her smiling with another guy, it feels like a dagger. Then he catches her sharing a kiss in the back yard, and he turns on his heels. Then he catches her crying alone on the sofa, and he silently makes his way up to Tooru’s room. Then one day he catches her smiling, and this time it’s at him, across the chatter of the Oikawa dining table that Iwaizumi fits so naturally with now, and he can’t meet her eyes. He makes his excuses after offering to wash the dishes, and leaves for home.

It’s been awhile since he’s caught her doing anything, and Tooru and him spends their evenings at his house now. Sometimes he wonders how she’s doing- it’s been several months, and Tooru hasn’t brought her up since.

He never really understood what he couldn’t meet her eyes that one evening. Perhaps it was the fact that she was his best friend’s sister, or maybe it was because she was two years older, or maybe it was the unspeakable fact that he had been too much of a voyeur for far too long, and the smile seared him.

Iwaizumi usually deals with his feelings with grace. He’s had crushes before, heck, he’s had a crush on Tooru when he was younger, even, but this- he can’t quite put his finger on it.

He’s okay with it being the way it is. It’s safer. It also feels less like he’s betrayed her, because he had chosen to walk away when her eyes were rimmed with red, and he wasn’t about to just bounce back at a smile.

Like he had said, that was months ago.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t come as a surprise when he walks into the classroom and Tooru’s desk is overflowing with both girls and chocolate in abundance. He can barely see his best friend, but he nods a good morning anyway before dropping down at his own table.

There are a few for him, too. A decent, respectable pile that is still a far cry better than what most of the guys get, but Iwaizumi gently sweeps them into the book gap on the underside of his desk. He catches a stray heart-shaped chocolate that’s headed right for his head, and doesn’t even need to give it a glance before he dumps it into his bag. Trust Tooru to want to decapitate him with chocolate first thing in the morning.

Lunch later is a funny affair. They’re quietly going through their lunchboxes in a unnoticeable corner of the volleyball court, as they do each year, because the girls don’t really find them there. Smells too much like men and sweat, Iwaizumi thinks.

He can hear the suspense in the air, and he patiently waits for Tooru to finish his excited monologue and get to the point.

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” Tooru brazenly declares.

Iwaizumi blinks, unimpressed. “I hadn’t noticed. The chocolates must have blinded me.”

“Iwa-chan, now’s not the time to be snarky!”

“You’re right. It’s time to eat.”

“I’m serious, Hajime.” The sound of his name makes him look up. It’s not like Tooru to be so serious, especially not after so much sugar. “You should take this chance. You know, can’t be a coward forever, you big muscle-head.”

“Muscle-head?” Iwaizumi replies irritably. Still, sincerity doesn’t reach his voice, and Tooru doesn’t waver. All he can do is sigh.

“I should have known you’d know.”

“Of course I know, silly Iwa-chan,” Tooru resumes with his picking out the ginger in his bento, “I live with my family, y’know. I know everything they’re thinking.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t say anything. As much as he would like to comment on what a busybody Tooru is, he can’t help but wish he shared in that skill sometimes.

 

* * *

 

He listens, this evening. Tooru comes up with a lot of shit that for everyone’s all round welfare they should ignore, so when he gets serious, Iwaizumi takes it to heart.

It’s usually White Day that the guys give back in return, but he’s waiting in the slight September chill by the door of their garden and he’s got a box of chocolates in his hands anyway.

He hears her footsteps before he hears her voice.

“Iwa-kun,” she breathes.

He brings his gaze up from the foliage to her face. She’s panting slightly, and Iwaizumi’s not quite sure how to feel about the fact that she might have ran down the stairs just to meet him. He clears his throat a bit awkwardly and holds out the chocolate to her.

“What’s with this family and nicknames?”

He relaxes significantly when she takes it without hesitation. She’s still looking at him, but he catches her fingers wrapped tightly around the gift from the edges of his vision.

“It’s catchy,” is all she says.

It appears that neither of them are good with words, so the silence stretches out. It’s not entirely uncomfortable, but his eyes are beginning to burn a little from the extended eye contact. He blinks, and the spell cracks at the edges.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he tells her. He’s not sure if he’s feeling a bit faint from the sheer amount of nerves he’s not showing right now, or if he was actually going insane. This may or may not be a terrible idea, and Tooru will definitely pay for it, no matter what the outcome.

Thankfully, she laughs. It’s a quiet chuckle, but it’s earthy and rich, everything that her brother’s voice isn’t, and it warms him like cocoa next to a crackling fire.

“Did it take you three months to make this?” Her eyes glint and her lips stretch into a broad smile. She’s braver than he his, so he does his best to match it.

“It’s been in the making for much longer,” he replies quietly, “there just wasn’t a good time to give it to you.”

“I see.” She moves closer, humming thoughtfully under her breath. His hitches in his throat when he feels her hand take his. Her face may be slightly flushed, but her hands are chilly and numb.

He wraps his own around it, rubbing her knuckles.

“I guess I’ll take White Day then, Iwa-kun.”

He’s terribly surprised. Her initial smile told him everything he had hoped to know, but  _this_ , hearing it was different. Hearing it made it real. Hearing it made him flush with happiness. He thinks he’s grinning, he can’t quite feel his face, but he takes the squeeze of her hand as a gesture of good faith.

“Okay,” he says.

Iwaizumi’s a bit hazy on how long they spend there in the garden, quietly catching up on all the things they’d missed. It could have been half an hour, or maybe three, or maybe until the next full moon but it takes Tooru’s third holler for them to realize that dinner’s ready, and they should really hurry up.

The Oikawa family seamlessly places him back where he belongs. It’s the same chair, the same warm ‘hello Hajime”, and it’s the same feeling of home that he can taste through the cooking.

Well, it’s almost all the same. She’s still a respectful distance away, but when she slides into the chair next to him instead of her usual spot and nobody bats an eye, he wonders if this is what everyone has seen coming, and if it hasn’t taken him just a little too long to realize how much this feels like love. 


	15. Close friends being very insecure about their body with Suga, Tsukishima, Kuroo and Yamaguchi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> i kinda love the idea of really really close platonic relationships so could you do suga, tsukki, kuroo and yamaguchi where they catch one of their closest friends (female pronouns) like being really insecure about her body? and she shows herself to be really outspoken and loud but they catch her just being really emotionally down and insecure maybe becuase of a break up or idk ur choice? sorry if that didnt make sense omg  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I love the idea of this prompt too! Thanks for this gorgeous request, and I hope you enjoy. Sorry for the wait!_

He sees you. Of course he sees you, he’s  **Suga** , and he’s always over on Thursdays and Saturdays to catch up with Daichi on the latest volleyball news. A part of you regrets taking advantage of Daichi’s late shift this afternoon to hole up in your room and pretend that the blankets covered everything that you hated about yourself.

It’s a little difficult to excuse the mellow lull of sad ballads in the room. Your quiet humming along dies in your throat when, from the small envelope of light in your blanket teepee, you suddenly make eye contact with Suga. He’s leaning slightly against your doorframe, eyes narrowed and full lips pressed tightly together. He’s scrutinizing you, and its successful because you feel very scrutinized indeed.

“Hey,” you offer. You hope he can at least catch the corners of your eyes creasing into a smile, because you’re going to do absolutely everything you can to throw him off the scent.

Not that you thought it’d work, but hey, a girl can try. Suga only watches you like a hawk for a few more seconds and then he sighs like he’s creating a raincloud from his breath. You close your eyes and continue humming.

The bed dips next to you, and a hand tugs loose the layer of blanket around your face.

“I knew it wasn’t nothing. Why didn’t you tell me the truth earlier?”

“It’s not anyone’s fault, and nobody can really fix it,” you reply.

Suga drops his hand in a gentle ‘thunk’ on your head. “It doesn’t mean you should hide it!”

“I just-!” you’re mid exclamation, but you don’t really remember what you’re exclaiming anymore. It doesn’t make sense, it never did, and Suga probably knows that even though this time it’s because of a boy, it’s been because of many other things before and it’ll be many other things again in the future.

It just never stops. For you, the safest place is where nobody can see you. Where you can’t even see yourself.

Suga’s not looking at anywhere but your eyes. His are a beautiful hazel as always, and they burn with a fire you recognize to be extinguished in you a long time ago. The tears can’t help but come, stabbing into your eyes, because you also know the fire burns on your behalf.

“Silly,” he murmurs firmly against the side of your head. He doesn’t comment on how you’re trying to hold in your sobs, and instead just runs his hands soothingly against the blanket that covers your back. It’s his signal, that you can cry your heart out, that he’s here for you, and from the way that he presses closer to you in an attempt to give you some human contact, you know that he’s doing everything he can.

He’s trying to erase anything else that guy might have left behind on you.

You hiccup, caught between a soft sob and a breath to speak. Suga beats you it with a kind smile. “You’re very beautiful, in every way. He didn’t bother to look past your smile so he’s going to miss out on everything that you are. Don’t let someone like that have such power over you.”

He gets a quiet exhale as a reply and you relax into his arms. You let his voice wash over you like a warm bath. It feels a little safer now, safe enough to break from the fetal position. Suga wraps his wiry arms around you in a hug so tight that it feels like he’s trying to squeeze all the sad out of you.  _He doesn’t need to_ , you think, because it’s not Suga’s hugs that glues the broken pieces of you back in place, it’s his never ending faith in you.

“Okay,” you mumble against his shoulder. You’re rewarded with a blinding smile that brightens your world tenfold the moment it appears.

“Good,” he says. He presses your head, cradled in gentle hands, against the crook of his neck and that’s how you two stay for a while until the sobs subside and the trembles diffuse.

You flip a large part of unoccupied blanket onto Suga’s head and pull him into your cocoon. For just ten minutes, you decide that you’re going to be age five again and your friend is going to help you camp out the fort. And, in true form, Suga takes up arms (a polka dot neck pillow) and the both of you work on battling those pesky inner demons.

 

* * *

 

 

Group projects have always gone down in history as one of the most annoying things in academia, but for the first time, you’re actually a bit grateful for the distraction right now. Then sky’s long fallen into a deep amber, lighting up the empty classroom in a dim, copper glow. There are only two other people besides you and  **Tsukishima** , and you watch them bicker between themselves with a small smile on your face.

You do your best to ignore the prickly feeling of your best friend boring holes in the side of your head from the intensity of his stare.

“You’re usually so much more subtle,” you comment. “Did I do something?”

There’s no response, and you’re too cowardly to turn to look at him. He just tuts after a few seconds of tense silence and you feel the prickly feeling fade away. A indiscernible sigh of relief leaves your chest and you tilt backwards a little in your chair.

Listening to the rest of your group argue about formatting was better than having to talk to Tsukishima. Better than having to talk to anyone, or listen to anyone, and least of all the ruthless voice in your head. It’s like a comforting, yet highly annoying buzz of a TV without a channel, but it does its job. Sadly, the argument only lasts for another five minutes until one of them swipes all his books into his bag and storms off in a huff. You shrug at the remaining person when they shoot you a frustrated look.

“We can sort this out tomorrow, don’t worry,” is the best you can offer. He takes it though, and waves the both of you remaining a weary goodbye before making his own way out of the classroom.

Ah. This is becoming somewhere you really don’t want to be.

Not unexpectedly, a hand grips your wrist before you can make a move to clear out too. It only takes one experimental tug to figure that Tsukishima was not letting you anywhere until you spilled.

“Talk,” he orders.

“Nothing happened. I’m  _fine_.”

“I didn’t just sit through the most awkward group meeting for you to bullshit me. Tell me what’s wrong, or I’m going to start guessing.”

You flinch a little. “Awkward? Because of me?”

He stares at you impassively. “It’s uncomfortable having to listen to my best friend pretend to laugh for an hour. You don’t even like group projects, so why were you so determined to follow their every word, hm?”

God, it’s been such a long, damned day.

“Okay,” you take a deep breath and look right into Tsukishima’s piercing, golden eyes. They’re holding the truth in you hostage, unwilling to let you pass by even an inch until it’s wrung out of you, until you confess all. That was his type of love- the brutal, unyielding kind that hits sense into you. “I just overheard someone talking about me before our last period.”

“Someone?”

Another deep breath. You inhale like it’s gaseous courage.

“My crush,” you answer quietly, “someone brought up my feelings for him and he said that I was… I was…” The sentence trails off, but the both of you know what it was going to say without having it floating around in the air.

When all of a sudden there’s a loud scratching noise of Tsukishima’s chair being pulled closer towards you, you jump a little. His gaze is almost uncharacteristically tender, even though nothing else on his face indicates that he’s changed expressions. Even now, you know that he’s noticed how huddled into yourself your sitting position is, and he’s hovering delicately on the precarious line of just-close-enough. Close enough for a hand to grip yours tightly. Close enough for his next words to echo through you like bass notes.

“You’re everything you need to be.” And his words shake your soul.

There’s nothing to be said, no sound you can push through your lips, because your throat is tightening around your air supply like a noose and it’s aching so badly yet relieving you of the burden of yourself at the same time.

“Don’t let some ass tell you who you are. He doesn’t know the first thing about you-  _really_  you.” Tsukishima’s grip softens and so do his eyes. His lithe fingers slip underneath yours to cradle them kindly, just like the solid support he’s always somehow managed to be for you when you need it most.

“You’re perfect to the people who matter.”

You think this is what smiling from your heart might feel like. It feels brighter than the evening sun, colder and more refined than the open windows, and it burns you a little. But it gives you life, and just for a second, you believe in everything that your best friend is telling you, because you’re strong enough.

The walk home is quiet. Not the uncomfortable, brittle quiet between the two of you earlier, but it’s a soft, understanding kind of peace. There’s no contact between the two of you as the clouds follow you on your way home, but you know that Tsukishima always manages to hold you up where it matters.

 

* * *

 

 

Breathing has been a challenge for a while, but today it feels like everything’s knocked out of you in one swift swoop. This isn’t like you- in fact this is the opposite of you. You’re the one they come to for advice, for comfort, for firm slabs of wisdom that keeps people moving forward. Today, there’s nothing you crave more than to take all those bits of advice and wisdom and shred them into tiny little pieces.

Unfortunately, this makes dinner with  **Kuroo**  rather difficult.

It’s movie night and it’s his turn to make dinner for your small group of friends on a Friday night. Bokuto’s enthusiastic as always, and Kenma has his eyes glued to his pay-to-play game, and the food tastes like fine dust in your mouth. You miss the look that Kuroo and Akaashi share across the table.

“Hey,” Kuroo murmurs quietly into your ear. The others play stone-paper-scissors in the background for a movie, and after food, the two of you are left to your own devices in the soft nook of the large sofa.

You don’t say a word when you tilt your head up to look at him wearily, and it only takes a gentle tug at your wrist to persuade you to relocate to somewhere less cheerful. The blankets are uncomfortably cold when you collapse onto Kuroo’s bed, but you wrap your legs in them anyway.

His hand is warm and firm against your arm as he pulls you to his side. Neither of you are looking at each other, favouring the half moon through his window instead.

“Is it the same guy?”

You laugh weakly. “It’s always the same guy.”

He gives you a quick glance, full of concern, and you look away like it burns you. “You’ve never told me his name.”

“It’s not important.”

“…Alright,” he rubs soft, comforting circles into your side, “what happened this time?”

It’s getting a little ridiculous, how often this happens. Any sane person would learn from the pain, heed their own advice, so to speak, but no, you just keep diving head in like you’ve nothing to lose. At the rate you’re shattering, there’s probably not  _going_ to be much left of you to lose by the end of it.

Still, you tell him. You always tell him. You tell him about how it hurts to breathe when the object of your affections holds hands with another girl. You tell him that it hurts almost just as much as when he smiles at you. You tell him that you saw him in the library today, and his girlfriend looks as beautiful as ever. You tell him that you’re not stupid, you know how this works, but why can’t your heart ever listen to you? Why does your mind short circuit at the feeling of him close by, why does your heartbeat start to sting at your ribs?

_Why are you simply just not good enough?_

“Why don’t you believe in yourself?” Kuroo asks you back.

You’re a little caught off guard, because you have no answer to that. You know you just don’t, but you have to tell him something- you owe him an answer, and the arm around you starts to tighten in your mind like a cage. A cage of your own making, pinning you down.

The skies aren’t for someone like you anyway.

“Stop,” he pinches your cheek gently, a rare furrow in his brow and he’s turning you around to look him straight in the face. “Love fucking sucks, I know, but you can’t do this to yourself.”

“I’m not doing anything to myself.” You’re crumbling a little underneath his gaze. “It’s just how it is. Am I supposed to lie?”

“Then believe us.” Kuroo looks torn between a fond smile and a frustrated sigh. “Believe us when we tell you that you’re not just what he makes you feel. Your strength doesn’t hinge on one man alone- we’re all here. We chose you, we love you.  _I_ love you.” His lips curl up into a small cheeky grin. “Believe me, I have high standards.”

That brings a smile to your blotchy face, and you watch as Kuroo blossoms underneath its rays.

“You do, you’re friends with Bokuto,” you laugh, truthfully this time, “and I still can’t believe you said our faculty idol wasn’t pretty enough.”

“Can’t help it, I like my women small, crying and pining over other men.” He raises an eyebrow dryly at you and you burst into laughter. His arm is still around your shaking shoulders, from mirth this time, and you realize that it doesn’t feel like a cage anymore.

Instead, it feels like a gentle anchor around your ankle, always careful to keep you close enough to the sun so that you’re warm, but far enough that you don’t burn.

\- - -

None of them say anything when you and Kuroo slip quietly into the spare space they saved for you on the beanbag. Bokuto just ruffles your hair carelessly, and Akaashi holds up the bag of popcorn under your nose.

 _Okay_ , you take a deep breath,  _I’m going to believe._

 

* * *

 

 

Maybe it was a good thing that he didn’t take them. You took another bite out of the box of chocolates you have in your hands, but a tear rolls over it at the last second and you grimace at the salty tinge. You aren’t sure if it’s the taste of crappy candy, or if it’s your disappointment materialized.

 **Yamaguchi**  just watches you worriedly without a word as you eat your way past your hiccups.

“I didn’t even expect him to say yes,” you managed to whimper through mouthfuls, “but he just… he just… just didn’t even give me a second glance.”

“I’m sorry,” Yamaguchi murmurs, eye downcast, and a hand placed quietly on your shoulder. The contact doesn’t do much to assuage the bubbling pool of resentment in your belly, but you lean into it all the same.

It only takes a small look at his face to see that he’s probably in as much pain to see you like this as you are, being the one experiencing it. Yamaguchi has never been the best at comforting others, because he just takes on their pain as his own, and it ends up being two people equally miserable.

That’s what you love him for though. The endless potential for empathy in his heart.

You pick up the roundest, sweetest chocolate there is left in the box and press it against his mouth. He’s too surprised to not eat it whole, and his little wince at the penetrating sweetness brings a small smile to your face for a change.

“You’re not allowed to look sadder than I am, Tadashi.”

It backfires. He deliberately looks even more hurt.

“I can’t help it! I don’t like you being sad.”

“I know, thank you.” Still, your spike of amusement begins to fade like the setting sun, and a small part of you wishes that the boy you fell for was half as kind as your best friend is. You always had to pick the confident, prideful ones. The ones that would always end up telling you that you’d make them look bad, or that your fashion sense just wasn’t their style, or that you were too fat to be seen around them.

This time was no different. It seems you never learn, mistake after mistake, and each time you’re left to nurse your broken heart by yourself, self-worth in tatters, eating your own confession chocolate by yourself. Each time, Yamaguchi would be there, anxious to keep your smile up for as long as possible, distracting you with his own suffering- misery loves company in the most endearing sort of way.

“I’ll just be alone forever,” you chuckle a little. It sounds fake even to you, but it’s the best you can do for now.

Yamaguchi grabs one of your hands and stares at you earnestly, like he’s trying to send all this feelings telepathically.

“You won’t be. You’re so pretty, and kind, and you’re so strong. You’re going to find someone who loves all of those things about you.”

“Maybe,” you say as you rub at your eyes, “but then they’ll see me up close and realize that I’m too fat, or too uncool, and they’re going to find someone else. That’s what they always do, right?”

“But-”

“-’cus I’m not special. If someone like me can be kind or strong, then someone beautiful can be kind and strong too. And all the guys will like those girls. The wonderful ones. The ones they dream about dating because,” you hiccup violently as the tears start to break at your voice, “because they’ll look so good next to each other. I’ll always be the sample that shows them what they want in a better girl.”

“No.” Yamaguchi’s crying too now, and he’s hugging you to him so strongly that you’re not sure if he’s comforting you, or he’s comforting himself with you. “ _No_. There’s nobody else I know that’s as kind as you are. Nobody else but you would stay with me until night because I’m feeling down. No-one else would let me cry on them like this. Do you know how genuinely  _lovely_  you are? Kindness- kindness isn’t something random people just have, it’s so rare and I can’t believe that those stupid guys don’t think it’s enough.”

He pulls back and you vaguely notice that there’s a small line of snot down your shirt.

“They don’t see you at all!” He’s holding your hands like a prayer now. Praying to the heavens that you’ll be able to love yourself like he loves you, because you’re one of the most beautiful people he’s met in his life. Your tears start to feel like they’re falling from affection than sadness now, and even though just by a little, the weight on your chest is relieved. You take a deep breath like you’ve been deprived.

“I’m tired, Tada-chan.”

“I know,” he replies, “but you can’t give up. You always pick yourself up whenever you get broken, and you’re always tougher than before.”

“I have to be tough for you, don’t I?” You laugh, and the sound of Yamaguchi following your lead drains the tension from your shoulders.

“Yeah,” is all he says, “we gotta be strong for each other.”

You give him a small nod. There are only two chocolates left in the purple box now, but you don’t feel like eating them anymore. Perhaps they won’t taste as bitter as earlier, but they won’t help. They won’t relieve you, or give you more chances, or bring those terrible love interests back. It’s learn your lesson, or be battered down again.

Yamaguchi pulls him with you to the nearest rubbish bin and without a word shared, you toss the box away. His hand around yours tightens with pride, and this time when you smile, it’s not forced or fake- it’s a difficult, genuine grin that’s laced with sadness and exhaustion, but Yamaguchi beams at it all the same.

“You’re smiling again,” he says to you, and the way home is filled with brave steps and wobbly smiles, both tentatively stretching out into the future. 


	16. Noya exposes his volleyball bruises whilst changing, tut tut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hii! okay i wasn't the anon that requested the tokyo ghoul crossover but can i just say i love it so much and whoever that anon is thanku u pure s o u l because oh my. would you be able to do a drabble/scenario thing with noya where his smol and shy s/o like 5"1 sees him whilehes changing shirts or something and she sees all his bruises from volleyball and she just like mutters for him to be more careful and just cuddles and fluffy cotton clouds everywehre  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Thank you for liking my TG au! :) I wrote a chunk for this prompt at the start and then realized I left out the ‘shy’ part of your character like the derp that I am. Here is attempt number two!_

It still makes you anxious sometimes, and more than a little nervous, to be living with your boyfriend. Even though the both of you are perfectly legal and it’s your third year together at university, there’s still something about Nishinoya that you’ll never think you’ll quite get used to. **  
**

Like how he just strides into the bathroom where you’re washing up, shirtless and shameless. He’s not flirty or sly, there’s no naked wink or anything, but you find yourself jumping a little when you dry your face and open your eyes to the sheer expanse of bare abs reflected in the mirror.

“Um…” you stutter a little under your breath, a light flush across your cheeks.

The ruddy thing is, you can’t really look away either. It’s like you’re five again and you’re peeking at the kiss scenes through shaky fingers.

Nishinoya stretches a little, grabbing the pile of dirty laundry to take outside, and you squeak. Thank goodness he doesn’t hear you, otherwise there’d never be an end to it.

Quickly, you wrap your dripping hair into a post-shower bun and sidle into your shared bedroom before he can catch you and twirl you around again in the hallway. You blush yet again- the last time he did that, your towel flew right off. By the time you had noticed the windows were open and you had a clear view of the building opposite you, you felt like you were going to die from embarrassment.

Yes, better to not have that again.

You make yourself comfortable in the absolute mess of sheets on the bed, forming a little nest and curling up just in time to watch your boyfriend trail after you and make a beeline straight to the drawers.

“Ran out of underwear again,” he mutters grumpily to himself, and you try to suppress a grin.

“That’s very serious,” you agree.

It’s when he turns around, gesticulating wildly with his hands, that your smile fades a little and a frown takes over instead. You hadn’t noticed it getting worse lately, and he hadn’t told you.

His excitement fades a little when he notices you’re not following the conversation, and he makes his way over to you without hesitation, clothing be damned. It startles you a little when he cups your face with his warm, firm hands with a single swift moment and he bends forwards into your personal space, peering at your eyes like they held the secrets to volleyball.

You’re not quite sure what to say, so you stay silent, trembling a little under the close examination.

“What’s wrong?” He finally gives up and sits back on his haunches. “Did I say something? You look kinda mad.”

“I’m not mad,” you correct him quickly. Mad was the absolute last thing you wanted him to think you were.

“Then what is it?”

You weren’t planning on saying anything really, but your eyes betray you when the earnest question prompts you to shoot a quick glance at his arms. And his knees. And his hips, which seem a little more swollen than usual. Nishinoya catches on in less than a heartbeat.

“It’s nothing.” He presses his forehead against yours as if he wants to take up your entire vision. “It’s volleyball like usual, Coach is just getting a little intense lately with the intramurals coming up next week.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing,” it comes out softer than you thought it would. Gently, you pull away from him a little and trace your cold fingers along the multitudes of bruises swirling across his arms like some kind of modern art. It’s purple, melding into green, and the blue accents the depth of how much pain it must have been from the impact. They’re all your favourite colours, splashed onto your favourite person, in the worst way possible.

He watches you as you slowly lean down, wisps of hair shading your gaze from his view, and press light kisses against his battle scars.

“Will you promise me you’ll be less reckless?” You ask into his skin. You can feel his pulse throb lightly against your chapped lips. It’s getting faster, and for a moment you wish you could see his face.

“I’m not trying to be reckless-”

“-Please?” This time you do look up, and you hope that your worry for him shines through your eyes. Maybe, because his widen and soften in equal measure. He brings a hand up to your cheek and a smile, not unlike his usual vast grin but something calmer, fonder, blooms on his face.

“Okay,” he murmurs, “I’ll try to get hurt less.”

“Good,” you grace him with a beaming smile, a hundred percent satisfied with his answer. Nishinoya never breaks his word, and that gives you peace.

Peace for a moment, you should have said instead, because it’s shattered into a million pieces the moment his loving smile transforms into a sly smirk. With the full power of a rolling thunder, he tackles you to the bed. You’re shrieking into your pillow, scrunched up in a defensive position as Nishinoya tickles you to death.

“Oh my God,” you manage to splutter in between pained gasps, “are you trying to end me right now, you injured man?”

“Injured?” The onslaught intensifies and it doesn’t stop for a good five minutes until you start crying. Nishinoya rolls off you with an incredibly smug expression and you glare at him halfheartedly.

“Were you trying to prove a point?”

He bites his lip and grins. “Maybe?”

You hum thoughtfully. He tenses up when you wet your lips a little, and start shuffling towards him with as much grace as you can muster. You’re awfully close now, his breathing has almost all but stopped, and his a mile-a-minute heartbeat fuels you to press a light kiss to his cheek.

“I think there might be a better way to prove that you’re still healthy,” you sing-song.

There are a lot more bruises that night.


	17. Crossover: Tokyo Ghoul nom nom with Tsukishima, Suga, Kageyama and Yamaguchi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Mild gore?
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> ok so i just read your tokyo ghoul crossover and im in love with it omg so do you think you would be able to do a different scenario (itdoesnt have to be long if you don't have time) with tsukki, kageyama, yamaguchi and suga where their s/o accidentally cuts herself or they just haven't eaten in a really long time and they're trying to control themselves what would they do? and maybe in some of the scenarios she knows that they're ghouls and some of them she doesnt? sorry this is os specific  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: This is why I don’t have nice things. Anyhow, I hoped to retain some of the cinematic quality of the previous TG post, but this has more of an actual TG madness aesthetic to it, and I hope you enjoy anyway. Thank you for this prompt! I fell in love with it almost immediately._

It’s ten in the evening, a bit late for dinner even for night owls like you two, but  **Tsukishima**  walks into the house like it’s nothing. He knows that you’ve been working later because of deadlines, but he himself never has an excuse when you ask him  for his reason. It’s not like you’d understand, the struggle of acquiring limited food packets each night. He can’t tell you that there’s been a shortage lately too, because a few gatherers have defected. No, there’s not much he can tell you, not even about how the craving for food has been burning a hole through his mind for the past few days, but when he sees your earnest face at the bedroom door, quietly asking if he’d like to join you at the dinner table tonight, there’s nothing he can do but follow you quietly.

That’s all he can do for you, after all. He doesn’t consider it lying, if you never asked. Tsukishima isn’t against telling the truth, but he’s reminded each time he comes home of how much there is to lose if you take it badly, if your world starts to change in front of your eyes and there’s nothing he can do to redeem himself because he is who he is. He takes a seat opposite you, a frail smile on his face and gets ready for a trying evening. The book in his hand is his distraction, and your happiness is his lifeline. You give him a small nod of acknowledgement, and dig in.

It only takes six seconds for him to realize how wrong he was about his hunger. 

The sounds of you chewing and swallowing sound like depravity to his ears. His fingers are tightening around the edges of the book that he usually reads when you eat, until they’re white and bloodless, just like the rest of his face. It’s torture, when his eyes are dragged forcibly to focus on how the chunks of glistening meat enters your mouth, the small sounds of satisfaction and he follows with searing focus when you swallow. If it was possible to be dead and longing at the same time, it would be an exact replica of Tsukishima’s iron fist on his self-control. He can no longer feel much of his pulse, nor hear anything other than you eating a normal human meal, and it takes enormous effort for him to place his book down and drop his head into his hands. It’s the only way to keep a grasp on his slipping sanity. He doesn’t know if you’re watching him, if you’re confused or if you’re worried- he doesn’t care much about anything anymore, he’s  _physically unable_  to care about anything else other than the raw feeling of starvation that incinerates his insides.

You’re reaching out a hand to him, concerned and a little terrified of his pallor, and Tsukishima smells it. It only takes a split second for him to slap your hand away with such force that you can see the bruise blooming on your wrist within moments. He knows you’re frightened now, you’re looking at him with those eyes, but all he can see is colour of fresh blood bursting through your broken capillaries. All he can hear is the deep  _thud thud thud_  of your pulse racing through your skin, and all he can feel is the perfect temperature of warmth from the redness of your cheeks.

He thinks you’re calling his name. It’s distant, frantic, but it’s getting further and further away from him until he’s almost gone in a haze of want. They call hunger the worst vice of humanity, and Tsukishima winces at the thought. It’s no different for beasts or monsters. We all hunger, we all lust, and we all devour.

This time he knows that he’s not dreaming your panicked voice. It’s calling out to him over and over again, each time getting a little faster, a little louder. It should panic him too, but he allows himself to relax a little and gather himself to get up from the chair. If he can hear you, at least it means that it’ll drown out the sound of your veins a little more. He definitely doesn’t dream the sharp intake of breath when he finally makes eye contact with you, and he’s glad that there’s something else to focus on other than that godforsaken bruise as he stumbles his way past you to the front door. It slams solidly behind him and never has he been happier to hear that sound in his life. In some distant part of his mind, it’s because he’s not going to be able to touch you. In the immediate part of his reality, he’s delighted because he doesn’t have to hold back anymore. Freedom means food.

He’s only been home for a total of fifteen minutes, but that’s all it takes to send his world tumbling down at his feet. It takes half that time for him to find a kill. It’s not his, he doesn’t like getting his clothes dirty and he doesn’t want to be arrested either, but nobody said that suicides were off the market. He takes the thigh first and an obscene groan of relief rips itself from his throat. He imagines the sight of you eating as he takes bite after bite, he can imagine what it must have felt like to have the sinewy flesh melt on your tongue, and he knows he’s no better than an animal right now but this is his salvation.

There’s a small splatter of blood on his shoes when he’s done. He raises a shaky palm to wipe away a trickle from the corner of his mouth and makes his way home from the river bank. The street is more visible to him than earlier, he can feel his feet and a vague sense of direction. It feels like a thick fog clearing up, the first rush of water after a frozen winter, and even the worried queries from the security at his apartment building can’t stop the feeling of completeness.

You’re right there to greet him at the door. It’s an unforgiving, betrayed expression and the grip on his wrist is no less tight than the way your lips are pressed together. He sees your face, and when he remembers he has a mind once again, the first thing that Tsukishima says is a loud, resounding  _fuck_.

 

* * *

 

He can see you in front of him, he can hear your voice asking him how his day was and he can feel your cool fingers against his hand. You’re right there in front of him, but **Kageyama**  still has absolutely no idea what you’re doing. It’s not until you’re peering at him closely, clicking your fingers against his left ear that he finally snaps back into reality. It takes more than half a conversation to finally make eye contact, and those eyes, pitch black and a glowing red, they stare right past you and into your body.

It takes three deep breaths and shaky palm against his face for you to gather the courage to ask him what’s wrong. He can hear you better now, now that his eyes have turned, but it’s not your words that touch his mind, it’s your solid breathing, your escalating heartbeat, and the way your hand smell against his face. So very close to his lips. A small lick, that’s all you feel against the pad of your thumb, and you get to watch as your boyfriend’s pupils get blown twice as wide, and his hands are starting to clench at his sides.

You opt to hold onto his hands instead. You’re praying that he knows you’re not afraid, that even though you feel as if you’re drowning under the weight of realization and reality, you’re still here for him. You’re only praying because he doesn’t look like he can understand words very well anymore. You ask again, louder, and again, firmer, and  _again_ , your nails digging small crescents into his skin and the pain seems to work- for a split second he’s looking at you now, rather than past you, and you can’t help but crack a small smile in relief.

Kageyama’s involuntary smile looks painful. He breathes out your name, groaning stiffly as a wave of achiness clutches at his tense muscles, and he lets his head fall forwards. You’re careful not to touch his face anymore, so you bend your knees a little to look at him. The roaring hunger seems to have subsided for a blissful few minutes, and it only takes a few words to slip out to explain the whole situation.

The first response you have is relief. Even though Kageyama tenses up even more when he feels you peel away years of stress from your frame, it feels like it’s ten times easier to breathe now knowing that he’s not actually hurt, he hasn’t been in a fight or had any issues with his territory. He just watches you, completely confused as to how you can possibly be relaxing instead of becoming more afraid, because he’s just told you to your face that he’s  _starving_. It’s like you haven’t registered the fact that you’re human, the fact that you’re flesh, smelling of fragrant bath products and flush with pumping blood that will taste like nectar to his parched lips. Do you not know, or do you not care? He whispers behind downcast eyes, but the only thing that speeds up his is own heartbeat when you respond with a breathtaking hug. He doesn’t think he can move, his arms are squeezed awkwardly against himself and you’re pressing a comforted smile against his neck.

He doesn’t understand how you’re perfectly fine. Even someone like you, someone who accepted him without a doubt and have been trying to learn about ghouls ever since, you should be feeling afraid. It’s instinct for the prey to fear the hunter, and you’re his beautiful ‘ _fuck off_ ’ to everything that’s natural. It doesn’t matter how human Kageyama looks or feels or sounds, he’s not, and this yearning for human flesh drives it into his consciousness. He’s the one afraid now- afraid that you’re forgetting that he’s different, that you’re just pretending it’s some kind of disorder that you can try and ‘get over’.

He remembers that you’ve never really talked about emergencies, or the future, or anything. After you’d found out it’s been just like life’s gone on and now, finally, shit’s raining down on his ears and he has absolutely no clue what to do with you. Should he stay? Should he leave? He just wants you to be safe- but that need is slowly becoming less and less prominent thanks to his burning desire for meat and he has to cry it out to himself to remember  _you_.

You’re still holding him, and he doesn’t know why. He can’t take this much longer- so he shoves you away. It infuriates him a little that you don’t even look the slightest bit hurt from it, in fact you’ve got this understanding and worried expression on and his heart is torn between resentment and affection.

Sometimes he dreams that he can be the human you seem to treat him as, because it’ll be easier on you. He’s never sure what he wants anymore, except for you. He’s always been fine, happy, pleased with his power and his identity and the way he feels so much more superior than his team. Then you came along, and it all went up in flames.

His voice sounds croaky and hoarse, but all he can do is plead to leave you until he’s sorted this out. It’s honestly his fault, he admits tiredly, because even though food had been getting scarce lately, he’s noticed a hungry, starving boy sitting in the shadows on his usual route home. Kageyama’s so sorry, sorry that he put you in danger because he just had to play the hero. It’s been a week now since he’s started giving the food to the orange-haired boy, and each time he passes by, he gets hungrier while the kid looks happier.

He just doesn’t know what to do. There’s none left.

You’re so still that Kageyama actually has to look up to check if you’re still breathing. You’ve moved slightly further away and a small part of him instantly misses you because he can still feel the lingering warmth from your body and there’s the nagging feeling that never leaves him, chanting into his mind that this, this is the day where you leave. It’s as quiet as a cemetery in this house that’s usually so filled with life. His crimson eyes are widening, his mouth is salivating and he’s absolutely terrified when you lift up your shirt. He doesn’t need to hear what you’re saying for him to understand.

He does his best, with tears streaming down his face, to pretend it’s a kiss.

You’re the texture of earthiness, you’re the taste of mead, and you’re the sound of agony that sings of love.

 

* * *

 

It’s a quiet evening out. The stars mingle with the decadence of christmas lights wrapped around the web of branches nearby and you can feel the chill against your cheekbones flush against the heat of your blush. It’s a beautiful night, and the warm touch of  **Yamaguchi** ’s hand wrapped around yours makes you feel like glowing. Neither of you are looking at each other at the moment, too distracted and in wonder when the clock hits 6pm, the cluster of colours in the sky starting to dim, and the lights flicker on and off to the tune of gentle christmas music. It’s only the beginning of December, as you often complain about when you’re assaulted with Deck the Halls on every corner, but you can’t help but fall a little in love with the festive spirit that seems to linger around this twelfth month.

There’s a gentle squeeze of your palm, and you turn your gaze to meet Yamaguchi’s. His eyes are sparkling at you, smiling the massive smile that his lips seem too shy for, and you match it with one of your own because there’s no holding back when it comes to early evenings together. The word  _perfect_  slips through your mouth, and you’re covering it immediately because that’s not what you meant to say at all. You were supposed to be more reserved, and calm and- it doesn’t matter, because the hyperbole is clearly mirrored in the way your boyfriend leans down to press a soft kiss on your cheek in agreement. The chill has nothing on the furious blush on both your faces now.

He’s pulling away, still staring at you with the tender gaze that only comes in stories. Both of you giggle a little after several moments, and when a hoard of children from absolutely nowhere barrel straight into you (you couldn’t really blame them, christmas time does bring about a sort of recklessness and freedom) he’s quick to sweep you to one side in case you got knocked over. A little too late perhaps, because you manage to trip over a small railing that surrounds a nearby tree, and there’s a slight sting on your calves. You watch the children go by, not even aware that they might cause another bowling effect on someone else later, and you turn to chuckle at Yamaguchi, a soft comment about youth and kids at the tip of your tongue.

For one second, you don’t see him at all. The christmas lights are still reflected in his eyes, blinking their multitudes in rhythm, and they’re like the constellations against the dark of night. You blink once, twice, and you realize that he’s still there, he’s no longer looking at you but fixated on the gashes by your ankle, and the sudden trickle of fear that slithers down your spine isn’t from the cut. In a moment of bravery, you push his cheek up to look at you instead.

This isn’t even a man anymore. The only thing that shoots through your reality is  _hunger_.

His eyes look as beautiful as the decorations around him, dark as ink with a strong glow of red for irises, and you have to hold yourself back from reaching out and touching the corner of them out of sheer curiousity. He looks exactly the same as the man who just held your hand so lovingly, pressed a kiss to your warm cheeks, but you know that you’re no longer the same woman to him.

 _You’re meat_ , his mouth seems to echo, and your brain short circuits with the overwhelming urge to scream. Nothing comes out, and you’re frozen to the floor. Even your fingers feel like strangers, your legs pillars, but there’s still part of your mind that gasps desperately still for some form of recognition in his eyes. That you’re aren’t just the blood that’s trickling down your leg, and  _please_ will he notice you?

It only takes a stray blink for the window of action to pass. He’s already tugging you away, your feet tumbling clumsily behind you, further and further from the fantasy of lights and people and laughter. All you can do is follow. Your heart is thudding about your ears and you’re hoping to god that you know why he’s dragging you away.

You’re not ready to lose him yet- is the first thing that comes you your mind when he finally stops and presses you urgently against a grimy wall. It’s dark here, the maze of buildings coming together in a forest of shadows that keep the both of you hidden from sight. Where you won’t be disturbed. Where you won’t be found.

Yamaguchi speaks first. Your eyes immediately shoot to his face, and the sound of his familiar tenor gives you strength in your body again. He sounds exactly the same as thirty minutes ago when the world was still a bubble, and you’re hanging onto his every word. It doesn’t come easy to him, apologizing. At least, that’s what you think it it, or at least what it should be, because it sounds a little more like a plea than an apology. He wants to leave, he can’t hang around you tonight, if you even wanted anything to do with him anymore.

It’s a humbling realization, that this is the first time you’ve been your boyfriend the way he truly is. His face isn’t lit up by any sort of shyness, affection or joy like when he’s around you. It’s broken, it’s longing, and above all it thirsts and hungers. There’s not much you can do but nod and let him go.

The both of you are staring at each other, you’re watching him desperately, and he’s fighting for any semblance of control he might have left, and before either of you can regret it, the two of you meet in the middle in a bruising kiss. Both of you keep your eyes open, drinking in each other like it’s the last time you’ll meet, and the parting of lips is just as caustic as their joining.

It’s quiet, and you’re exhausted. He walks away without looking back, and the only thing left for you this christmas is the conviction thrumming in your veins. You’ll find him again.

 

* * *

 

It probably is just fate, but lately it’s beginning to feel like a curse. You’re not sure how many more things you have to see in the dark alleys of Tokyo until you’re going to end up permanently scarred. It’s later in the day than last time, where you found those children, but this view isn’t any better. In fact, it’s a million times worse, because you know him,  **Suga** , the man that’s broken and battered on his knees, and you can see his kagune looking torn and ripped up, hanging limply by his side.

The first gasp of your name sounds like a hymn, the way his melodic voice seems to wrap itself around you no matter how tired, how far he was. He’s looking at you with so much relief, even though the rational part of his mind is screaming at him that no, this isn’t good, you shouldn’t be here- but you take a step forward anyway. His weak smile broadens, and his arms reach out for you feebly and you have to trip your last few steps to catch him in time.

You can trace your fingers along the well defined bruises on his face if you wanted to. They littered his arms, his legs and the strips of skin that looked more like ribbons of flesh instead of an intact being. For a minute you marveled at how he was still alive, still breathing, and then you were swallowed with worry, because he’s  _still breathing_ , and you wish so much that he were unconscious instead. At least he wouldn’t have to take breaths through the pain, fogging up his vision, until the only thing he can feel or recognize is you. It’s the smell he fell in love with, the smell he sleeps beside every night, and the smell he always longs to taste but never tells you.

There’s a small sanctuary of you in his senses for now that keeps the agony at bay. You don’t waste much time- there’s only a quick run of your fingers through his hair out of habit, and then you’re off. He’s looped around your shoulders, a stream of blood staining your work clothes and you know you can’t go back now, even if you wanted to. Suga’s a lot heavier than you expect when he’s limp and half beaten to death, and you only manage to make it to a small underground restaurant that seems closed during the day.

You don’t even hesitate before you kick a leg out and promptly shatter the main entrance. You’re striding in without shame, carefully laying him down on a large table. Now would be a good time to hyperventilate.

His breathing is ragged, and you want to shake him awake, demanding to know why you’re on your lunch break when you have to come by the sight of your boyfriend reduced to slivers of flesh from a fight down an abandoned street. It was his day off, you think miserably to yourself, he was supposed to have taken it easy, but it has to just end with him half alive. His wounds are still bleeding, but once you fall into a chair, exhausted from absolutely everything, you notice that the flesh is beginning to knit itself up, the skin stretching from its roots like cloth and he is growing back underneath your eyes. You’re hopeful, that it means his bones will fix themselves, and that it won’t sound like his lungs are labouring under the weight of his ribs, and that maybe, he’ll wake up.

You want to hear your name on his lips again. You want him to hold you again like you’re the sand and he’s the waves, and that it’s destiny for the two of you to come together again and again. You want him to be okay, and just for once, not have to worry you because of how recklessly you know he lives when you’re not there. It’s his only way of protecting you, of trying to keep your life as normal as possible while surviving as best as he can as a ghoul. There’s a little you know, from all the news articles and books that you’ve picked up as soon as you learned about his true nature, and it seems like Suga was attacked on his own territory for food. The net is tightening around his kind, and there’s nowhere left to go except for ontop of each other.

His pallor isn’t getting any better, even when the deep gashes in his sides are knitted back together, and you don’t think you’ve ever been this afraid in your life. For the first time, you absolutely resent the fact that he’s a ghoul. That he has to live this life he never asked for, never complained about it, and there would be no way for you to help him. He’s untouchable in his own world, and the only place for you in it was if you turned into a meal. He’d probably take that just as well as you taking him dying in front of you right now.

The chair makes a dreadful scraping noise against the tiled floor as you stand up. You begin to rummage around, searching for anything you think might help him, ease his pain a little more, because you sure as hell aren’t going to sit there and watch him die. There’s only a few cloths and a gas lighter, and some wooden planks that would help if only he were a human. You’re flipping your way through the cutlery, each movement becoming more frantic and more desperate, and it’s not until you can hear the dripping on the floor that you realize there’s a large gash across your arm where you had accidentally ran along a steak knife.

It’s the only idea you have.

It doesn’t feel any firmer than a kiss. Suga’s lips part slightly when you press your arm across them, smearing his discoloured face with irregular streaks of blood. He looks so lovely still, like a mangled piece of art, the way his purple, blue and black blends in with your crimson and you place a trembling hand against his cheek.

You make no sound when his blunt teeth sink into your skin and start tearing chunks from it. His head is still tilted unnaturally to one side, there’s no sign of consciousness, and the only thing that tells you he’s still in there is his insatiable hunger for the taste of you. The pain in your arm feels like divine retribution, punishing you for keeping this creature alive.

When his eyes finally open, the ache of your heart mending itself finally brings you to tears. 


	18. Angel and Demons AU with Kyoutani, Oikawa and Kuroo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Explicit content
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> not too long ago i found little mini drabbles about haikyuu characters being these like demon things and then the s/o is an angel or like the girl character is an angel and they kinda catch them? and trap them and stuff and they threaten that they could tear their wings off okay it sounds way better than i have explained it but i was thinking maybe you could do something similar for kyoutani, oikawa and kuroo?  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I just took the idea of ‘corruption’ and went with it, so it might be a little more… serious? adult? than what you’ve read. I also dabbled in a new kind of formatting because my rough notes actually ended up a little more poetic than I expected._

The scars looked beautiful on you. Your supple flesh, never aging, brought out the fine strokes of each gash, highlighted the violet of each bruise, contrasted each bead of blood.  **Kyoutani**  prided himself on his choice and his methods. You were a masterful canvas for his rage, aggression and power.

Sometimes, if he ordered you close enough, he could still see the vestiges of defiance struggling in you. It pleased him, on his good days. On his bad, he found deliverance in ripping it out from you, piece by piece. It infuriated and enchanted him in equal measure, how you would never fail to heal from your most grievous wounds. There was an impermanence to the art he hacked into your skin, but the feeling of the first marking of a blank slate excited him.

 _Please_ , he heard you whisper. You were pulled to him like magnetism with a lazy crook of his finger, and he grabbed your face with a wiry hand, his talons pricking roses of pain into your cheeks.

 _Louder_ , he only said. It was flat, without intonation, and it was a demanding tone that made you weak in the knees. You licked your parched lips, and tried again.  _Please_ , you moaned,  _let me go_.

The claws around your face cut straight to the bone, and all you could see was the burning ire in his sun-coloured eyes. The tense moment of quiet gave you no relief, and when the hearty laugh finally came, you hung your head low.

It took no effort to throw you across the room like a toy. If the impact didn’t steal your breath away, his heel crushing against your torso definitely would. Kyoutani leaned forwards, lips curled upwards into a vicious snarl, and for a moment you thought he was the devil himself.

He was never going to let you go. It wasn’t a matter of how hard you fought, it was a matter of how long you could still fight. The slow rake of his fingers against your neck left ribbons.

You both had an eternity to live. He would enjoy his eternity by watching you suffer through yours.

\- - -

_He is the vice of submission, absolute dominance in spirit. He wants you to be his slave, to obey his every command, and he wants you to enjoy it while you’re broken at his feet, your reason for existence now hinging on his every bark, every punch thrown your way. When he’s pleased, he’ll let you touch his hand in reverence. If he’s angry, he will chain you to the wall and pummel you until you’re black and blue and your ribs are protruding out of your abdomen. Even then, it brings him relief to see the brokenness of your soul through your dead eyes. His brand of pain is the only thing you know. You’re his outlet, and you live for it._

 

* * *

 

His fingers felt like heaven to you, each gentle scrape of blunt nails against yours scalp sent tremors down your frame, and **Oikawa**  hummed lightly when you keened into his hand for more. He withdrew it almost immediately, out of amusement, and you threw yourself onto the ground, prostrate and pliant. His displeasure would mean incredible pain for you, tearing at your heart and your mind until it twisted it into braids of self-loathing.

 _You’re my everything_ , you exhaled. He watched as your forehead touched the ground, your lithe hands bound in a desperate prayer, your frail little soul falling deeper in love with the demon who stole your existence. He let you alone, when you began your ritual. It painted a beautiful picture, your robes hung artfully off your pale shoulders, your halo burned bright as ever above your river of hair, and when he looked at you, he could see the light of God singing through your skin.

It had been terribly easy to catch you. A little longer to break you, but he had manipulated your weakness like a puppet doll. You had been dancing his tune for longer than you could even fathom, and when the Lord became all too lacking, Oikawa had welcomed you with open arms. Since that moment, he had never had to say a word to you, and your purpose became his absent speech.

Perhaps today was the day.

They say the beautiful are always the most cruel. His sculpted lips parted and even his breath felt like glory, and he began to speak.

_In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth._

You started to scream.

_Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters._

The tears glittered gold, streaking your face with riches of the heavens. Hearing the lines felt like old wounds opening up afresh, but with no source, and no reprieve.

_And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light._

His voice faded to nothing, and you were left shivering, dyed in a pool of gold of your own making. You could feel him calling your gaze to him, and without protest you obeyed. When his eyes reached in and squeezed around your soul, you felt the tears spring anew.

 _Your voice_ , you gasped,  _you grace me_ , for you no longer remembered scripture, and his voice was the only gospel you recognized.

\- - -

_He embodies worship. He doesn’t need you to be his inferior, he already knows you’re a lesser being. He wants to see an angel, a once high and mighty worshipper of God, kissing his feet, bringing him his every whim, prostrating yourself to him because you find him more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen. He doesn’t give a shit who you are- as long as you have those glowing white wings attached to your shoulder blades, he wants your love. He wants to burn the grooves of his beauty into you, to close your eyes and only see him behind your lids. Until the day you shatter, Oikawa Tooru will be the only God you believe in._

 

* * *

 

 **** **Kuroo**  had never needed to take control of any mind. He didn’t need powers of lesser demons, for they made a mockery of sin and wickedness. The truth was simple to him, and he lived out his existence practicing it: that true corruption came from within, an erosion of the mind and the gateway to freedom. Your slickness encasing his length proved it time and time again.

He hadn’t needed to do anything at all, to receive you like this. Temptation had merely run its course, and when you had come across it in your holy travels, it had slithered inside of you like the snake it was. Lust, like an idea, tickled you from the inside, pressing against your innermost areas and pried the screams of release from you during your darkest nights. Kuroo only had to wait, to be patient, for you to fall into his lap and begging for salvation.

You were always free to leave, you just chose not to.

When his own bubbling arousal started to curl in his abdomen, he pressed a slow kiss to your bloated lips. He allowed it to grow, starting off with an almost affectionate caress of your mouth, then closer and tighter until you could feel the press of his daggered teeth against your gums, then he slipped your lips apart and his masterful forked tongue licked up against your tongue. Then, he bled it into you.

It was like the world had grown darker and hotter all in one second. Your body was wracked with the pain of loss, clarity and obscenity in unison, and Kuroo’s eyes told you all you needed to know.

 _Good morning_ , his sensual whisper grazed pass your ear and you shuddered, voluntarily, and with disgust. He had woken you, breathed your mind back into your soul and he felt your blistering stare, filled with hatred, delightful against his senses.

A slick hand slid down to rub at your front, and you cried out in revulsion. But before you could even gather your senses to strike him, he trapped your wings between his unyielding calves and you found yourself bound against him. Unable to respond in any way other than according to his will, he tore the reluctant moans of pleasure from your hoarse throat. He watched, with orgasmic pleasure, as you surrendered your sanity back to him, trust by thrust.

Kuroo grinned when you came, sobbing, your juices soaking the ends of your heavenly garments, and your chanting his name was music to his ears.

Even though you were his favourite toy, he thought to himself as he languidly licked you off his claws, defiling you would always be his favourite game.

\- - -

_He is the depravity of sexual release. He toys with the idea of being so lusted after that nobody can control themselves. You’re an angel, one of the holiest, purest beings to have ever graced this plane of existence and he wants you wet and begging, curled up against the wall, crying as you’re working yourself to the thought of him. Your heaven is having him in you, feeling him break you apart from the inside, and all the while he doesn’t have to lift a finger. Kuroo doesn’t have to do anything at all, and he already knows he owns you, because you’re addicted._


	19. Oikawa and Iwaizumi's s/o went through a suicide attempt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Self harm
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> i see you write angst extremely well this might as well be called an angst blog literally its so good. if this is against your rules by all means excuse this request but would you be able to do a scenario with oikawa and iwai where their s/o just went through a suicide attempt? and the guys are just being really over protective over them and doting over them etc and just general fluff becuase they're so scared that they'll break downagainnn sudjfoisjfos  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Fluff? What’s fluff? Okay, all joking aside, I tried. Oikawa is just too beautiful when he’s struggling. Anyhow, I (can’t speak for anyone else’s experience but) don’t think that there can be too much fluff after something like that. It’s not simply recovering after being very sad, but it’s almost like trying to bring back someone from the dead. It’s a lot harder, and you’re not the same as before. I hope you enjoy._

“Please,” is the only thing **Oikawa**  says after ten minutes of silence.

He’s wrapped you in a blanket, bundled up onto his bed and all the corners are tucked in around you. It’s a quiet morning, and it’s quiet all around. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to say to make the gleam in your eyes come back.

You’re smiling though and it chills him.

“Tooru,” your voice is a soft croon, and he falls forwards into your arms. Forwards is the only way left for him, backwards is full of things he doesn’t understand, and things that scare him.

You scared him.

He presses a kiss to your temple and he hears you laugh a little behind all the padding. It warms his beating heart a little.

“I don’t want to explain it,” you say, “I’m sorry I can’t help you more.”

“Is it because it’s me?” He presses, muffled against your neck. You smile.

“Partly.”

It starts to burn behind his eyes and he wraps his arms around you. Sometimes, he hates that you’re so stoic. It’s like you don’t need him.

Your chest rises with a small inhale, and you murmur against his shoulder. “I don’t want the person I love the most to see the worst parts of me. I want you to still love me, Tooru.”

“Of course I love you!” It sounds like a sob.

He feels your small hands run through his hair and he squeezes his eyes close. Your heartbeat is gentle and steady, and he can hear it even though he’s not pressed up against it.

He wonders if you’re ever as much of a wreck as he can be.

“You’re so selfish,” he says, “did you think of my feelings? What would I do if you left me behind?”

“I did,” you reply. There is a sudden shudder that shoots through your body and Oikawa realizes that you’re holding back tears. “But you’re so much stronger than you think you are. You’d be okay.”

He hates it so much when you talk like that.

So he grabs you by the chin, and forces you to look into his eyes. He doesn’t know what he looks like, but it makes you start to cry.

“That’s just like you, to be so quiet about yourself but start crying when it’s about other people.” He’s gripping your chin very tightly, and he can see it turn white from all the blood rushing out.

You on the other hand, are looking at him like he’s the sun.

“You don’t… you don’t have to tell me everything,” he pleads, “but at least rely on me for something. Cry when you’re sad, or get angry when you’re mad because… because I get scared, when I think about the chance that you’ll disappear without me knowing a thing about you.”

You don’t want to look at him anymore. It hurts, and it’s blinding. He sees your expression change and he presses you against his chest again.

He smells familiar, like home.

“I do need your help.” Your voice is a lot smaller than before. He stares down at the top of your head. “I’ve always needed your help, Tooru.”

“With what?”

It’s too quiet, and he asks you to repeat yourself. He hears it the second time.

“Staying alive.”

“Okay,” he replies. There is no hesitation.

You relax into him and it’s become easier to breathe. He inhales firmly.

You smell familiar too, like home.

 

* * *

 

It’s been two weeks, and  **Iwaizumi**  finally sees you smile for the first time.

“I thought you didn’t like flowers,” he says.

You’re bent over, poking at several carnations. He hopes that the flower shop assistant doesn’t catch you harassing their plants.

“I still don’t,” you reply, “but someone at work got a bunch of flowers at lunch.”

“So?”

“So,” he scrunches up his nose when you reach up to boop it instead, “I just started thinking that maybe I should learn to love them? Since it’s what girls should like and all.”

You don’t seem surprised when he takes your hand. It’s a firm grip, like always, but this time he laces his fingers through yours a lot faster. He tugs you away from the store and you stumble a bit after him.

“I’m not dating other girls,” he says. He’s not looking at you, he’s just staring straight ahead. You used to call him cool when he did that, but now you’re just silent.

“Instead of flowers, I’ll just get you something else.”

“Eh?” You startle a little, “but I don’t want anything.”

He stops at a small bench to the side of the street and sits down. You’re still hovering over him and it takes a firm pull on your hand for you to follow.

There’s a lot of people for a Thursday afternoon, and Iwaizumi doesn’t usually enjoy public affection because it makes him feel awkward, like he’s oversharing.

He places a hand on your cheek and kisses you fully on the mouth. When you relax a little, he wraps his other arm around you and gathers you into him as closely as possible. He can feel the heat from your cheeks at this proximity, and the sound of your heart is growing louder and faster. He smiles a little into the kiss and pulls back with a small flick of his tongue.

You look a bit dazed, and a little bit ashamed. His smile melts away.

“I’m not doing this just to make you feel better, you know.”

You look up at him, and his face is serious and stern. He’s talking to you in earnest now.

“I know,” you mumble, “you don’t have ulterior motives like that.”

He nods and the hand on your cheek drops to your waist.

“You smiled for the first time today,” he tells you.

You look a bit surprised, but say nothing.

“That’s why I’m doing all this,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair, “because even though you don’t want anything, I do.” He leans forwards into your personal space and the ‘thud’ of his forehead landing on yours sends a small tremor through you. “I want to make you smile so much that your cheeks hurt, because I want you to be happy.”

You open your mouth to say something, but he cuts you off before you can.

“I want you to  _want_  to be happy,” he says firmly, “and I’ll be doing anything I can to fill your days with so much of it that if you ever consider doing anything stupid again, you won’t, because you’ll miss this too much.”

Silence falls over you two, because you realize that there’s no way you can follow that up with anything decent. Except with crying, but Iwaizumi will probably feel even more flustered if you started to cry. He’s waiting for you to respond, though, so you try.

“So you are doing this to make me feel better.”

That wasn’t the wisest thing to say, you think after you’ve said it. Iwaizumi stares at you with an intense blend of frustration and fondness.

“I’m not,” he reiterates, “I’m making you happy because I like seeing you happy. It’s for me.”

“Alright,” you nod. He relaxes a little when he catches the small smile tickling the corner of your lips.

He presses another kiss to your lips before pulling you up again. Neither of you have any clue where you’re headed to next, but neither of you stop to think about it either.

“Stay with me,” he says after you pass the third toy store.

There are no such thing as absolutes. “I promise I’ll do my best,” you reply.

He’ll take that for now. Until the day you do give him an absolute answer.

“Okay,” he says.


	20. Kuroo and Semi with an s/o attempting suicide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Self harm
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> can you please do the same suicide attempt scenario but for kuroo and semi? or just kuroo if you're not used to writing for semi :)  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: This was a genuine delight to write. I think the most interesting thing about the two is how differently I think they’d deal. Neither is better than the other, but I think there’s a definite contrast. Still, they’re both very caring and this was very heartwarming to pen. Thank you for requesting!_

**Semi**  was the one who found you in the bathtub on a Tuesday evening. It had taken until the Tuesday after until the hospital was willing to discharge you.

It’s a Tuesday today too, and even though it’s been six Tuesdays since that afternoon, he still hasn’t forgiven you. His hand feels callous and brittle against your own palm, and in the fading light of the evening, the park seems all too open for anything meaningful to occur.

He tries anyway, because your expression is life or death to him.

“Do you feel any better today?”

“Not much,” you smile at him. His eyes narrow at that.

“You don’t have to smile when you’re not happy,” he tells you.

A few months ago he would have believed in your smiles. He would have laughed along with you if you laughed. All he sees now are possibilities, unspoken wounds and chances that slip by him. It only takes a look into his eyes to see that he doesn’t trust you anymore.

Sometimes it makes you wonder how he’s the only thing you managed to lose.

“I’m not unhappy,” you murmur, “isn’t that enough reason for me to smile?”

“You-” He stops, slamming on the brakes to his own sentence and you’re left hanging. A part of you knows what he wants to say, and the rest of you hopes he won’t say it. Likewise, Semi knows what he wants to say, and the rest of him makes him swallow his words.

He tries not to push his hurt onto you, but it’s so much harder than he thought it would be. This time, he doesn’t have you to support him. At least, he doesn’t think you can.

You close your eyes, breathe in, and smile up at the yellowing maple leaves. It’s the most genuine one in days, and you hope that it reaches him.

“I’m sorry.”

Semi just stares at you. His mouth is a little agape and somehow, it seems wrong to hear those words coming from your lips curled up in such a peaceful smile. He can’t help but believe you this time, even if he doesn’t understand what’s going on. That’s a feeling he gets a lot of the time with you nowadays.

So, he asks you. “…Why?”

“For lying.” His hand is placed loosely on the bench between you two and you hold on to his index finger. “For not telling you sooner, or anything. For scaring you, for not saying sorry earlier.”

He doesn’t miss a beat before he reaches up with his free hand and pushes your cheek to look at him. It’s not a dead stare, and even though there are none of the crinkles around your eyes that he loves, he can see the life in them. Semi has always been a person who trusts in what he can see, and he always responds so accordingly.

“Then promise not to lie to me anymore.”

There’s a small pained look on your face before it flits away into resignation. His stare doesn’t waver, it’s as firm as steady as the hand on your cheek, as his persistence to understand you. He was never going to let you go without a yes, not when you looked like you wanted to live again for the first time in weeks.

“I promise to try.”

The hand doesn’t leave your cheek even when he sits back, mollified, but the firm press of it melts into a gentle caress. You lean your face into it; you feel your heart trying to burst out from your ribs because you hadn’t taken into account how much you missed being with him. Semi just watches you in silence, his thumb drawing soft circles against your skin because he knows.

He may not completely grasp the incoherency of your thoughts, but he can recognize love when he sees it. He’s never stopped seeing it, because it’s drawn into the grooves of your movements, etched onto the planes of your face and it simmers behind your eyes.

His kiss is tender, his lips are dry, and he gathers you into his arms until you’re snug against him. A hand brushes your back in soothing patterns and he nips reassuringly at your lower lip when it trembles. He’s not sure whose tears he suddenly tastes, but it doesn’t matter. To Semi, it simply brings out the sweetness of you.

 

* * *

 

It’s been a week, and you have yet to see  **Kuroo**  crack. His gaze follows you across the silence of your living room as you offer to make him some tea. He doesn’t say anything, but just watches you.

“Would you like some help?” he calls softly when he sees your hand tremble.

His smile mirrors yours when you offer him the handle wordlessly. He can feel your warmth hovering next to him, and the air around you thickens with the mist of the steaming water. He puts down the kettle and laces his long fingers through yours.

The tea leaves begin to diffuse, marbling the water with a rich brown, and Kuroo guides you back onto the sofa. The TV is on, playing a quiet documentary about the Arctic, but the quiet chatter between the two of you muffle any outside sounds.

Kuroo’s smile hasn’t changed. It’s still a soft, private tilt of his lips, and it still repeats his fondness in the echoes of every word he says. His eyes though, his eyes are a little different. They’re warmer than before, more open, and when he catches you looking elsewhere, he allows a little sadness to bleed through.

He’s given it days of thought, and he knows there’s nothing he can do. There wouldn’t be a point in lecturing you, pleading or flooding you with as many experiences as possible. Kuroo chooses to stay with you, in his own way, and he chooses to understand.

He hopes that it’s enough.

“How is today?”

“Good,” you chuckle.

He grins. “You’re laughing.”

“I am,” you repeat. You stick your tongue out at him, and his hand sneaks up to pinch it. A second later he reaches up to wipe it on your cheek and you make a face.

“Ew, do it on yourself.”

“But it’s your saliva.”

“You touched it first!”

Kuroo leans down to kiss you. It’s firm and warm and he kisses like a promise.

Your forehead is knitted together and your eyes are watery when he pulls away. He lets his fingers trace silly shapes onto your cheek and his other arm snakes around you to hold you closer against his chest. He doesn’t say anything when you bury your face into his shirt and start to sob.

He presses his lips against the crown of your head and waits for you to let it all go. There isn’t a much better use of his shirt than for you, he thinks.

“Feeling better?” He asks when he feels you start to breathe properly again.

You’re still muffled against him when you reply quietly, “yeah.”

Everything is still for a while, until you lean back out of his embrace. Kuroo is a little bewildered by the broad grin on your face, but he holds his tongue.

You start laughing, and he has to reach out to you to see if you’re okay.

“Uh,” he begins.

“I’m good,” you’re still laughing and it’s a little contagious now, “I’m _actually good_.”

“Good,” he says right back.

He wraps himself around you and you wrap yourself around him. The both of you cackle and laugh until tears are pooling at the corners of your eyes and your ribs are starting to hurt.

You’re smiling in relief when it finally starts to subside. He smiles too, but only because he finds you incredible at the worst of moments. He loves you, so he smiles.

“Thank you,” you finally say. He waits. “I shouldn’t have done that to you, you didn’t deserve it.”

“It’s okay,” he says.

“I’ll… try, to repay you for this,” you press your palm lightly against his tousled bed hair, “I’ll try to choose you as often as I can. Since… since you’re here like this.” Your voice has faded into a low murmur, and it takes a little more effort to meet his golden eyes. They’re filled with brightness and sadness and they’re all the things that he knows is better shown than said.

Kuroo kisses you again, gently, carefully, and you can feel his smile tickling the edges of your lips.

You’re blushing. You’re grateful. You’re so  _good_  that you can’t believe it still. Maybe it won’t be the same tomorrow, but today- today is all you need to get through at a time.

“We’ve let the tea grow cold,” you realize.

“Well,” he replies, “we can always start it again.” 


	21. Crossover: Tokyo Ghoul post-noms with Suga and Kageyama

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Mild gore
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> omg do you think you could do a scenario in the girls perspective with suga and kages for the tokyo ghoul crossover during+after the scene of where they bite their s/o? and like what the boys would do etc (i loved it sososososossososososooss much btws!)  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Alright, here’s this thing that took ages. The two actually ended up in completely different directions from each other which surprised me a lot. I think this is the scenario that brings out the diversity of their actual traits (and thus their s/o’s), which then affects how strong their relationship is when it comes to overcoming emotional obstacles. I’d love to know your views on them too. Anyway, that’s enough of that preaching, I hope you enjoy!_

In an ideal world, you’d be able to save your boyfriend. He’d wake up, eyelashes fluttering as beautifully as ever over his blood-crusted cheekbones. He’d touch your face with relief and whisper softly in your ear how glad he is to see you and that you make a beautiful sight to wake up to. He’d be smiling, his teeth glinting in the dim orange of the empty bar, and you’d feel like you can breathe again.

In this world, nothing comes without a price. His eyelashes don’t flutter, they’re lying dead against his drained pallor, and his hand doesn’t touch your face. He does wake up, sits up, but you don’t need a second glance to realize that this isn’t a  **Suga**  you recognize. His eyes are pitch black, lit up with demonic red, and the bloodlust with which he stares at your exhausted face leaks and swirls into his broken grin. He can’t see you, he can’t even tell the difference between you and the table, but you smell like sweet, fresh nectar to him. He sinks his teeth in further, his coarse tongue writhing into your flesh. You taste even better than you smell.

It only takes a minute of mindless agony until you don’t feel anything anymore. Your arm doesn’t throb, it feels like the death of a limb. Your mind doesn’t falter and your breath doesn’t hitch. The reality was this: Suga was starving, and you simply didn’t have the luxury of feeding him by spoonfuls. He wouldn’t have been able to eat from cutlery more than you could with a toothpick.

It takes a while, but you can see bone by the time he’s done. There’s almost nothing left but scraps of skin, small threads of leftover tendon and fat. Some areas are still torn into strips, but certain sections have been picked clean. Your body falls into shock faster than you expect. Within seconds, you’re shut down as much as possible until all that’s left of you is dripping blood and shallow breaths.

It takes Suga two minutes to fall back into sleep, but you hit unconsciousness in one.

\- - -

The next time you blink, you’re in a hospital. The blinds are closed and the artificial white light glares at you tireless from the ceiling, and it’s impossible for you to tell what day or time it is. The one thing you do notice is that there isn’t any trace of silver hair around you. In a small act of desperation, you push yourself up higher on the bed to gain at least a little more view of the people behind the hospital curtains, but the abrupt movement topples you to one side in a sudden shift. You collapse on the bed, a little winded. You didn’t expect to have so much strength sapped from you- you must have been here far longer than you thought.

A slow grinding noise kicks you back into alert, and a kindly looking, brown haired nurse walks in. You don’t say anything, and she looks a little surprised to see you awake but doesn’t speak quite yet. She takes an anxious look at her clipboard and purses her lips. You supposed you should be glad that you didn’t get an asshole to care for you, but the pitying expression on her face didn’t make you feel any better. You don’t need to hear her diagnosis to know the news anyway.

They put you into a wheelchair, just in case.  It’s an expensive one, a motorized one, and all the mechanisms are placed on the left. You’re glad for the fact that you wouldn’t need to push yourself, because you weren’t sure how you’d manage- infuriatingly, that was probably why they stuck you in here. The next few hours is a whirlwind of different professionals coming in to tell you that you’re lucky to have survived a ghoul attack. The doctors come and pat you on the head, comforting hands guiding your chair and no matter how many times they appear somber and sad, you’ve come to realize there’s always a spark of fascination when they watch you. To the ghoul investigators, you’re less of a prized specimen. They come and go in their suits, faces as bright as monsoon season  and they tell you with almost textbook precision that they’d be tracing the attacker as quickly as possible, so there’s absolutely nothing to panic about, civilian. Everyone tells you all about how lucky you are to be found, how much blood there was, and what a shame that you’ve been hurt so. Then they tell you that it’s okay to be in shock still, you don’t have to force yourself, they understand.

They don’t, because there’s nothing on your face you want to show these people. You just want to know where Suga is, and you want to go home. This is the only thought that keeps you in one piece.

They soon discharge you with low murmurs and comforting whispers. It’s been five days since you’ve been ‘attacked’, and they give you a small device that allows you to alert the CCG if you see your attacker again. It fits right into your small palm, cool and smooth to the touch. The agents gesture to it once more before you step out of the hospital.

It’s in the trash the instant you turn the corner.

-

The social worker leaves you at your door with an expression of vague concern and you wave them away as kindly as you can afford. Cases like yours are more common for the social worker, so he leaves you with relative speed. You pause with your hand hovering over the lock, waiting until they’ve passed the corner for you to stand up from the wheelchair and tap in the security key to your door.

You think this is the widest you’ve ever smiled, sagging from relief, when you see Suga sitting there. He’s fully dressed and cleaned up, as perfect as if he had just gotten off work on a Tuesday. His eyebags are worse, but you don’t mention them, even if they tell you that he hasn’t slept in days. It takes him a few long moments for his focus to return. He pulls his vacant stare away from the wall that you’ve hung an old holiday photo on and fixes it on you instead. Suga sees you, pales, and his kagune reach you before his feet do. You’re dragged quickly into his arms, and he presses you against him like he’s found his child again.

For several minutes, the only thing you can hear from him that’s still coherent is hoarse whispers of ‘reckless’ and ‘sorry’, but his touch only sings ‘love’ in the most wretched of ways. It takes a while, but he finally pulls back and traces a hand around the stump of your right elbow. It’s only until he brushes the tears off the corner of your lips do you realize you’re crying. The ache in your chest burns ten times more than his bites ever did.

He thinks so loudly, you can hear everything without even trying. You can hear the gears turning in his head, the harsh voices that tell him it’s all his fault, that one day you’ll hold him responsible for what he’s made you. Suga holds you like you’re about to leave. He doesn’t need your forgiveness, there’s nothing for you to forgive in the first place, but you don’t bother saying any of that. Suga was never the type who simply believed in what you said. It’ll take time, years, perhaps, but if he let’s you, you’d spend it all with him.

What you do end up saying instead is a quiet whisper.   _Will you teach me to write with my other hand instead?_  You ask with a soft smile. Suga inhales so deeply that you shudder along with him, and he nods, and sighs a low yes into the late afternoon air.

 

* * *

 

 **Kageyama** doesn’t eat much. It starts with a delicate nip, like he’s ready for your punishment at any moment, but you don’t move. Your body is trembling with all the fear that you’re not letting yourself feel. Yet when you feel the pain start to grip at your lungs, and Kageyama’s hands inevitably tighten around your waist, you give yourself up to the incredible agony that is being eaten alive.

You’ve never been a brave person, and even a moment’s choice can’t redeem your undeniable nature. More than anything, you wished you were braver, that you could at least give Kageyama this, if nothing else.

The sobs and screams for him to stop (or for death, you stopped being able to tell after the first few minutes) rack your body with violent tremors and spasms until you’re finally spent, a haggard mess of blood and fluid on your expensive wooden flooring.

The pain makes you regret every decision you’ve ever made, and the knowledge makes the guilt eat you up even more until you’re vomiting onto the ground, your knees quavering from the exertion. Kageyama’s just there, shaking on the sidelines, with his fists drawn tightly over his forehead and mouth. He wants to stop taking more from you- his mind shouts at him that he’s had enough to survive off of but he can’t quite forgive himself either, because for a moment there he forgot you were his lover. He forgot that you were a breathing human being, and for a second, your screams sounded like the accompaniment of a rich delicacy.

He stretches a hand out weakly to try and help you. His hand pats your back with as much comfort as he can summon, his other reaching upwards to brush the strands of hair, soaked with sweat and bile, away from your face as you continue to heave. At this point, you’re not sure what you’re vomiting for- your missing chunks of flesh, or the fact that you were too weak to even endure for the person you loved.

Kageyama quietly offers to drive you to the hospital once your heaving stops. It’s a muted kind of quiet, a quiet filled with equal amounts of anxiousness and regret that makes you want to cry. He wasn’t supposed to be the one to feel bad-  _you_  were, and you deserved it.

You take this proffered hand without looking him in the eye. If he’s trying to make eye contact, you wouldn’t know either way and the walk to the underground parking is just filled with whimpers, deep breaths, and tension. Your boyfriend looks as poised and healthy as a man fresh from a day of sleep and you make a poor contrast. Kageyama doesn’t say anything, not even when the ER nurse stares at him concernedly because the picture he paints is a stoic man holding up a staggering woman, an unhealthy grey tinge to her skin and splattered with blood. You wonder if the nurse just scribbles ‘walking corpse’ into her chart.

You’re placed swiftly into a cot, and soon you’re joined by a series of doctors and curious hospital staff that weave in and out of your area to take a peek at the ‘ghoul victim’. There wasn’t any point in calling it anything else- the bites were so visibly bites that the scars would probably leave teeth marks. Somehow you manage to squeeze out a weak smile when your actual doctor stops by the foot of your bed and grimly tells you that they’re going to have to prepare you for immediate surgery. The only thing that really means anything to you comes in the filtered words of ‘heat’ and ‘lacerations’. Kageyama’s face doesn’t move, and the only support you get from glancing at him is his fixed countenance. The only thing you see there is regret.

He’s still there when you’re wheeled away. You don’t have to crane your neck to know that he’s not coming with you.

\- - -

You’re somewhat grateful that he at least reappears at your side when you wake from the anesthesia. You roll your head around uncomfortably for a few seconds before Kageyama hands you a small watch. It’s late in the afternoon, and nothing’s changed. He still knows exactly what you’re looking for, and exactly what you’re feeling as you stare tiredly at the trinket. It was the watch he bought you after he landed his first commercial gig after his big tournament win on the national team. It was the most expensive thing you had ever owned, and you’d kept it locked up, too afraid of wearing it and losing it.

Slowly, you reach your closest arm out and offer it to Kageyama along with the watch.

For a man who’s never learned how to smile, the small crack of relieved joy on his face illuminates the whole room. His nimble fingers pick their way around the watch until it’s secure and solid against your frail wrist. He was right, the light cream and dulled metallic brought out all the brightness of your skin, and his smile fades away when he remembers exactly how easy that wrist can be broken.

It’s only a split second decision, but you think that if you failed to be there for him when he needed your courage the most, then the only thing left for you to do was to try again until you came through.  It takes a few tugs, but he finally shifts, and reluctantly he slips into the small empty space on the bed next to you. Tense would perhaps be an understatement, but you take a few deeps breaths and let your muscle memory do the work.

You bodies slot into each other as naturally as water flowing downstream, and no matter how much Kageyama tries to keep his composure, the shards of doubt come crumbling down around him until it’s just him, you, and all the things that he’s ruined in your life. It takes several attempts for those words to make it through his lips, and by then his hands are curled tightly into fists that look like they could break walls.

It takes you longer than he does to admit half the things he did. Who knew that holding someone close to you would make truths so much harder to say, or turn your heartbeat into a drill that breaks through all the bones in your body with sheer nervousness. It all comes spilling out, words, emotions, tears and all.  _It was my choice_ , you do your best to tell him through his shirt,  _I didn’t mean the screaming_ , and, you finally brought your head up to meet his eyes for the first time in hours,  _I’d do it all again for you, I swear_.

When he looks at you solemnly (although he can’t fool you, the corners of his mouth are turned up in that familiar smirk) and tells you that he’s not sure his heart can survive this a second time, it lifts all your burdens and dams alike- is there such thing as happy crying? Whatever it is, you’re both doing it, and you hope that your almost manic sob-laugh hybrids don’t end up alerting the nurses outside your hospital room.

The edges of the following silence have smoothed out into gentle, curved waves. There’s still so much you need to tell him, all the things that you need to explain and for him to know, but Kageyama is fast asleep. The forced creases at the end of his eyes are finally smoothed out back into the boy you live with, and you can’t help but wonder how long he had been sitting in that seat earlier, waiting for you to come out of surgery, waiting for you to prove that you’re alive again.

You’ll ask him tomorrow.


	22. Royalty AU with Iwaoi for Secret Santa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> >   
> so i finally finished this, i’m so sorry for the wait and i’m super excited for you to read it! hello, @ackermanss it’s your hq!! secret santa and i’m so happy that you were my recipient and i wish you all the best with this upcoming year, and it was an absolute pleasure to chat with you, you lovely person :D   
> i wrote this small iwaoi one-shot for you, and i hope that you enjoy it as much as i had fun writing it (even if it’s not as festive as i would have loved it to be ;_;) have a wonderful, wonderful end of december, and good luck with everything! :D  
> 

“What a beautiful night.”

Iwaizumi looked to his right. He was met with a pair of eyes as brown as the hair that came with it, and they sharpened when they noticed him staring. He looked away before they cut him.

He stayed silent, letting the cool breeze ruffle through his short hair.

“Tired of the festivities?” The voice came again.

He tapped a finger against the marble ledge. “This is a private balcony.”

The man laughed, and Iwaizumi couldn’t help but steal a quick glance out of the corner of his vision. The soft curls bounced on his crown, and they seemed to be incensed by that crystalline laugh. He was relieved those eyes were closed while he chortled.

“I’ll be sure to tell anyone who tries to come in,” the man smiled.

Iwaizumi supposed it was his own fault, that he had dismissed the guards outside his room. There was a small moment of concern that pricked him for a second- the realization that this man could have accessed anything in his private office without obstruction. Maybe he’d go back inside just to find several official documents swiped off his desk.

The man moved closer, and Iwaizumi let out a soft breath when he felt the gaze on him intensify.

“It’ll be harder to leave undetected than it was to come in,” he spoke plainly.

The man waved a hand airily. “Who says I’ll be leaving?”

Iwaizumi turned his head to regard him fully then. His fingers were tapping a little harder against the marble, and the man spared it a quick, amused glance.

“What do you want?”

“Not a ‘who are you’?” The man grinned. It looked a little sinister from the dim lighting.

Iwaizumi just stared. “No.”

“Okay,” the man breathed, “then, you.”

If it were possible for him to stare even more disapprovingly than he was already, Iwaizumi most certainly would have. “I am not up for taking.”

“What about giving?” The man asked sweetly.

Iwaizumi looked away again, his interest fading. This time he looked up at the stars.

“I prefer my men to at least knock before they enter.”

The man laughed again, this time like it was some sort of inside joke. It might be, in a way, if it wasn’t disrespectful to make overt sexual jokes about the King. Iwaizumi didn’t respond, and just listened and waited for the laughter to die down again. He laughed like the stars on a particularly clear night and Iwaizumi watched it sparkle, reluctantly.

“I suppose I should have,” said the man, “you’re the type to experience everything  _properly_ , aren’t you?”

Iwaizumi didn’t shift when the man sidled even closer. Their shoulders were almost touching now, and he noticed absentmindedly that the man was slightly taller than him. They bent for him, however, pressing their clothing together like an intimate brush of lips.

“Yes,” he replied.

He didn’t care to ask how he’d known about his courtships. They were by no means secret, but this man seemed to have a proclivity for picking out true rumours from false. Iwaizumi did not find enjoyment in illicit activities no matter how many impostors claimed to have experienced otherwise. Impermanence, had always been something that had terrified and disgusted him in equal measure.

And this man, this sudden, mysterious stranger at his side, he was the embodiment of impermanence.  His smirk glinted in the moonlight like a knife’s edge, freshly sharpened.

Iwaizumi wondered if he could read his mind, or something silly.

“Were you invited?”

The man looked a little startled that Iwaizumi had spoke first, and the latter found a small sense of smugness brew quietly underneath his belly. Iwaizumi made no move to acknowledge the other man further, but he allowed a brief flicker of satisfaction to touch his lips.

“If you mean to the ball,” answered the man, “then yes.”

Iwaizumi nodded briefly. The man leaned closer, his handsome expression twisted into a small leer.

“Curious about me?”

“Not particularly,” said Iwaizumi, “but I am allowed some relief to know that at least I won’t have to bump into you again in my own residence.”

The man laughed again, this time, and for the first time, sounding warm and genuine. Iwaizumi smiled naturally.

“You can hire me if you’d like,” giggled the man, “I’d set a fantastic example for all the gardeners you have.”

“My field would wither away in a month,” Iwaizumi responded, “if all my gardeners abandoned their work just to stare at you day after day.”

“Then you could start charging,” murmured the man, his voice curling into ripples of richness, his lips all of a sudden too close to Iwaizumi’s ear, “when people start visiting your gardens to view the most beautiful bloom in all the kingdoms.”

Iwaizumi leaned away from the ledge. He took a step back and finally, slowly, gave the man an appraising gaze that dragged all the way up from the polished curve of his shoe to the slightly darkened tips of his hair. The man stretched a little as if bathing under the attention.

“You are clearly under no delusions of your own beauty,” said Iwaizumi.

“I’m under very few delusions altogether, if I may say so myself,” came the swift reply, “least of all anything remotely humble.”

“Indeed,” said Iwaizumi, “you’re here, after all.”

“So you don’t think this is a delusion?”

“I don’t think this is humble.”

“Then you’re under no delusions of your own importance, either,” the man laughed.

Iwaizumi sighed, and gifted him with an uncontrollable deadpan expression. “It’s difficult to think that I am of no importance when I have just escaped from a ball held in honour of my own coronation, of which you were a guest.”

“I’m still a guest!” The man lilted in an appropriately scandalized tone, but he was smiling quite widely.

“Yes,” drawled Iwaizumi, “heaven forbid you be mistaken for a trespasser.”

“And what do you do with trespassers?” Iwaizumi felt a soft hand cup his chin, tilting his head ever so slightly to his right; he shivered, and made no attempt to hide it.

His voice needed not be anything above a whisper for the sound to carry where he wanted it to.

“ _To_  trespassers.”

“To trespassers,” the man corrected. Iwaizumi’s gaze was held in thrall by those blinking brown orbs that seemed to dance and paint pictures in his mind. He could hear the teasing smile in the man’s voice, and a small part of him wished that he could look away, look down, to see for himself those full and tempting lips of which he had only deigned a quick glimpse before.

“They are brought before me.” Iwaizumi’s voice did not waver, and the smile widened.

“Do they kneel?”

“Yes,” he murmured. They were closer now, even if Iwaizumi had no recollection of either of them moving forwards. He felt the spare hand trailing gentle patterns against the back of his hand, fingers nimble and elegant. In the back of his mind, he recognized those patterns as the crest of his own house.

“After that?”

“After, I ask them for their purpose.”

Iwaizumi trailed the constellation of andromeda reflected in the man’s eyes with his own. He wondered if there were as many stars in this man’s expression as there was in the sky itself.

He was comforted, knowing that he didn’t have to stop looking. The man smiled faded, melted away into a singularly intense gaze. There was no hunger to be found in it, no desperation, no want. It was a pure, solitary impulse to ‘go’, and Iwaizumi, as his first independent decision as King, ‘went’.

They watched each other when their lips met, quiet and dry, the only moisture being a small puff of air that escaped the other man’s mouth. Iwaizumi felt his fingers curl, and with a small press of his lips, he pulled back.

They were close enough to each other still, for Iwaizumi to feel the thick, beautiful lashes that framed those high cheekbones flutter against his own. He felt a sudden, mind-numbing urge to prise as many wet noises as he could from this ridiculous man in front of him.

Instead, he waited.

“Do you send them away after you’ve heard their purpose?” Came the liquid voice, finally. The face betrayed nothing, but Iwaizumi felt the familiar sense of satisfaction when he heard the undercurrents of bubbling heat and uncertainty in what he had gotten used to as a cocky voice.

He took a step back, and gracefully mourned the sudden dissipation of warmth.

“That depends on their answer,” he replied.

The man stared a little disappointedly at the sudden space between them, but raised his eyes once again to brush over the sharp edges of Iwaizumi’s warmer complexion. The corner of the man’s lips slid upwards almost involuntarily, like a natural bodily response to seeing something beautiful.

The man extended a hand outwards, in a proud and assuming gesture leveled right at Iwaizumi’s face.

“I came to have you.”

“I am very expensive.”

“I have a lot to offer.”

“Do you?” There was  raised eyebrow, and the man dropped his hand to his side, laughing for the fourth time that night.

“I’m no royalty, if that was what you were suggesting,” the man grinned, “but perhaps you may find a wealth of intrigue and excitement with this lowly earl.”

“Intrigue,” echoed Iwaizumi dryly, “tell me, what good is a book full of questions and no answers?”

In a swift moment, the man surged forwards, and Iwaizumi felt his breath stolen out from his lungs when a pair of warm lips pressed heated, open mouthed kisses along the harsh line of his jaw. An arm cradled the back of his neck with the care of a husband, and another slid around and underneath his clothing, pressing their lower bodies against each other like lovers.

This time Iwaizumi didn’t have to keep his eyes open to see stars.

“So that you may take your time,” the man answered lowly, “slowly,” the hand at his waist dipped into supple but firm flesh, “thoroughly,” a thigh slid in between Iwaizumi’s legs and shoved lightly, “ _pleasurably_ ,” a hot tongue slid past pliant lips and this time they kissed wetly, panting, moaning, and they parted a lung’s worth of air later with a slick trail of spit connecting the two of them, “discovering all the answers.”

Somehow, Iwaizumi didn’t believe for a second that there could be any answers to this man. Neither proper nor improper, he had slid into Iwaizumi’s senses like a thief, and the knife that had been plunged into his side flipped every sort of regularity in his life upside down.

When Iwaizumi brought his eyes up to the man’s face again, he felt the remaining breath in his body vanish into the winter night like a dream.

“You look like you’re in love,” said Iwaizumi.

The man froze in a moment, his face caught off guard and Iwaizumi watched carefully, cautious as if not to spook him. Then, he saw something he did not expect. The man began to blush, a soft pink trickling its way upwards from his neck all the way to the apples of his cheeks, and Iwaizumi felt like kissing him again.

The man just smiled, a little broken, a little wounded and a little bit happy.

“Do I?”

Iwaizumi nodded, but didn’t say anything else.

The man let out a sigh, and it seemed as if the tension in him both increased and diminished all in one go. A lesser man would have brushed a hand through their hair, but this one left it coiffed perfectly, and instead wrapped a small bundle around a slim finger. Iwaizumi watched, feeling a little bit like the hair.

They stood there, in silence and in the cool night air, and for the first time that night, Iwaizumi felt like they were finally on the same playing field after that accidental admission. No-one was dancing around anymore, it was just two men, both a little confused and a little happy, standing in comfortable silence of their own making.

Iwaizumi let a small smile spread across his face, and something in him delighted when the man mirrored it.

“I do have a lot of questions,” he finally said, and the man looked like he had woken up from a summer dream at the sound of Iwaizumi’s voice, “but you seem like you have more than enough answers about me.”

“Being prepared, you mean?” The man responded, a little twinkle in his eye.

Iwaizumi leaned backwards against the open french door to his room, his legs crossed at the knee. The man made no attempt to move closer, and seemed to settle into his position against the moonlight.

“Prepared,” he agreed, “calculated. Confident.” He paused. “Meticulous?”

The man grinned again, and Iwaizumi found that out of all those times, this was the one that held the most promise. The  most sensuality. He was sorely tempted to move forwards and bite into that plush looking lower lip, something quite unlike himself.

“See?” The man giggled, “you’re doing quite well with finding your own answers.”

Iwaizumi only raised a brow. “Deflecting is only a method men use when they have something to hide.”

The giggling subsided, and dare he say, the soft warmth from a few minutes ago returned to the smile. It looked more fragile than the last.

“Well, some answers are more pleasant than others. Should we start with those instead?”

“We,” pointed out Iwaizumi.

The man hesitated, the first time seeming anything other than assured. Iwaizumi didn’t miss the way those fingers touched, wringing themselves a little anxiously. It had never occurred to him before that someone like this man would feel anything other than absolute confidence before slipping into a royal bedroom, uninvited. The revelation was an unbidden answer of its own, and he felt himself softening with each vulnerability he learned.

Perhaps, he wasn’t  _the_  man. He was just a man, like himself, and Iwaizumi took a step forward from his passive position to pull himself to his full height. It still wasn’t taller than the other man, but the other shrunk a little all the same. He placed his hands on either side of the man.

“It will take a long time, if you wish for me to begin from the beginning with you,” he said.

The man inhaled, and his eyes crinkled into half-moons as his face split into a picture of disbelieving joy.

“I have a plan,” was the only answer that came. Iwaizumi drank in the bubbling excitement that threatened to burst out from under that composed reply, that composed position and anything left that was still passably composed in this brown haired trespasser. His brown haired trespasser, all sharp and spicy, rolling into sight like an elegant thundercloud.

“And a head start,” Iwaizumi pointed out.

His trespasser pushed off the ledge and leaned into Iwaizumi’s firm chest. His hands, Iwaizumi noted idly, were slightly larger than his own, but the fingers were a lot thinner. They curled warmly into the fabric at his collarbone, and a stray thumb stroked the line of his throat affectionately.

“I’m sure you’ll catch up,” the man breathed fondly. Iwaizumi took note in his mind, that this man had probably known about him for quite some time- long enough for that fondness to manifest into almost tangible longing. He wondered if he’d learn the answer to that too.

For now, for him, curiosity was enough. This attraction he had never experienced to such a magnitude seemed to push his very being further and further into those swirling depths of secret sensuality and youthful insecurity that seemed to fill up those brown eyes.

“Were you waiting for a chance to catch me alone all this time?” Iwaizumi couldn’t help but finally ask, his face hovering close enough to the other’s to almost feel intimate. “After I became King?”

“No.” Iwaizumi blinked a few times at the blunt response. The man’s eyes betrayed nothing but innocence, and he found himself watching those lips curve into more words. “I wasn’t going to act at all, but then I saw you dismiss your guards.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have done that,” Iwaizumi grumbled.

The man only grinned slyly. “So I thought to myself, at least he has a balcony from which I could throw myself if I felt the need to.”

The image of this brazen and all too cocky man feeling embarrassed enough to throw himself off a balcony forced an inelegant snort out of Iwaizumi. The man only laughed along with him, a hint of embarrassment finally peeking it head out.

“Silly, wasn’t I?”

Iwaizumi brought a hand up and in a moment of defiance, ruffled the man’s hair. The man gasped and immediately jumped backwards, bringing his hands up to his head almost tearfully. Then his eyes snapped to the offender, narrowing in near-betrayal.

“ _Iwaizumi_!” He wailed, and Iwaizumi grinned smugly.

“Still as silly as earlier,” he said, “and that’s ‘your majesty’ to you.”

The look he received in reply could have refrozen glaciers. Iwaizumi was decently impressed, that someone could switch their character so seamlessly from just a ruffle of their hair.

“Did that take a while to style?” He wondered out loud.

“ _No_ ,” came the petulant reply, “I wake up this beautiful.”

“Nobody wakes up beautiful.”

“Speak for yourself,” the man sniffed, and Iwaizumi found himself bursting out into laughter. The man’s eyes widened almost comically at the sight, and that prompted him to laugh even harder. This was so completely ridiculous and so natural, and Iwaizumi almost felt like this was his first time truly laughing since the day he was born.

The man’s hands dropped from his hair, and a slow smile spread across his face. A hand quietly slipped their fingers in between Iwaizumi’s shaking ones, and still laughing, he wrapped them tighter around his own.

When it finally subsided, the delightful blush was back on the man’s face, and so was the small echo of an adoring look. Iwaizumi let out a final, relieved sigh that carried as many of his burdens into the northern wind as it could, and tugged gently at the hand in his.

The man looked up, a question in his eyes, and Iwaizumi just smiled.

“Come. We’ll see who’s right and who’s wrong tomorrow morning.”

The crystalline laugh followed the both of them all the way back to bed, until they were tangled between too many legs and Iwaizumi still heard its echoes  the next morning when he brushed the strands out of the sleeping man’s face.

He smiled, and wrapped the sheets tighter around them both.

 

* * *

 

“Iwa-chan.  _Iwa-chan_.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Iwa-chan, your servant keeps looking at me weirdly.”

“Maybe it’s your ugly face in the morning.”

“That’s not possible. I’m beautiful all the time!”

“I’ll tell the servant to bring a mirror along with him next time.”

_“So mean, Iwa-chan!”_


	23. Kuroo tries to impress with his knowledge of stars and lands on the moon instead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> oh my god wait i got another cute one because girllll you need to balance out all this angst on your blog hahahah. scenario with kuroo where he's trying to impress his s/o and it's only like the start-ish of their relationship and they're stargazing and hes just pointing out random shit and calling the constellation random names to impress her and she plays along for a little but she actually studied astrology and knows everything hes saying wrong and calls him out eventually hahahha  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I really needed to write something happy, so here it is! I had plans and everything, but when I started writing Kuroo just kind of… took over, and made all the decisions himself. I hope he knows what he’s doing. I wrote this in chunks, on different days, so please forgive any inconsistencies with tone. Still, I hope you like it!_

“That looks like a dog. I think it’s a dog. Sirius.” He glanced at you out of the corner of his eye, and you allowed a gentle smile to wash over your face and you continued to watch the sky.

“I see its tail,” you hummed.

The night sky was always more your thing than fireworks. Explosions were nice too, but they were too bright, too loud, and more than often there were a lot of other people around. The silence of the stars was what made them all the more beautiful, you thought.

The only thing warm was the small thermos sat next to your thighs, and the small cushions that padded your seating. Everything else was a brilliant cold, the sharpness of the concrete next to you, the thin blankets that covered your lap and the air the brushed your cheeks felt like steel.

When your focus waned and your vision blurred, the stars seemed like first snow.

Kuroo’s hand landed on yours calmly, and you allowed his fingers to fit through yours without complaint. He held you with the same lightness that dusted his voice, tinged with a little bit of nervousness. It was what had made you nod when he asked to be with you; this man, with the smile of summer, held the vestiges of warmth of a passing autumn in his voice. His wasn’t the voice of a man who melted hearts, it was a voice of morning frost that sharpened your senses tenfold.

When you realized that in moments of solitude you missed his laugh as much as you missed winter, choosing yes had been easy.

You still remembered the massive grin on his face that split it almost in half, and he had gripped your hands so tightly in his that you thought he’d break out dancing any second. Instead, the two of you had just stared at each other with embarrassed smiles in the hallway until a teacher had physically shoved the both of you into a classroom.

He lifted a long, pale finger and traced another set of stars that shone steadfastly next to each other.

“Big Dipper? Big dipper.” He nodded to himself.

You grinned too, and raised your own hand, trembling from the icy air, and drew it past his. His gaze followed your hand, and you watched as he more or less began to forget the existence of his own. His face was flushed with cold, and you felt your breath leave you a little when you saw the anticipation in it.

“Is that the milky way?” He breathed excitedly at your gesture, “that’s pretty damn awesome!”

You didn’t comment when he grabbed your hand nonchalantly out of the air, linking the two of you together again like habit, like he belonged with you. You just sat in silence and blushed, from your neck all the way down to the tips of your toes, and you curled up closer next to him.

A warm arm draped itself across your shoulders and held you there, firmly, gently. The soft glow of the rare milky way reflected itself in Kuroo’s amber eyes, now a murky black in the evening light, and with each blink he seemed to breathe in more of the starlight.

Maybe this was the chill getting to you, or the hours you’ve spent staring into darkness, but you swore, in that moment, he glowed. When he looked down at you, his expression softening, you were certain that his smile at least, carried the warmth of all the stars combined.

Together, your linked hands lowered onto the blankets between you two, and he rubbed a thumb over your raw knuckles. Your cheeks heated up, but you were helpless to do anything but smile right back.

“You cold?” He asked, the hand around your shoulders rubbing furiously at your arm. “You can have my jacket if you’d like.”

You shook your head. “I’m warm,” and you blew a puff of steam into the air just to prove it.

Kuroo laughed and ruffled your hair.

“Got it, warm as a dragon.”

You held in a laugh, and chose to grin up at him instead. His cheeks were a little pink, but he smirked right back, as if daring you to call him lame. You stared at him for a few more seconds before making a choice.

“Kuroo-kun,” you murmured, forcing him to lean closer to you to catch your soft words, “the big dipper only appears in summer.”

He didn’t miss a beat.

“Aw crap,” he groaned, his hand still in yours, arm still around you, body language seeming anything but abashed, and he watched you with amusement dancing about in his eyes. There was a slight moment of clarity where you realized you may or may not just have landed into his territory- making fun of people, but you soldiered on past that infernal grin of his.

“So,” he asked casually, “wanna teach me about the stars?”

There was something you always heard your dad tell you whenever dating was brought up.  _‘If a guy likes you, he should be at least a little nervous’_. You blinked at Kuroo and that comfortable smile, and if there was any nervousness from earlier, it had completely vanished. There was a quick moment where you wanted to run a finger along the underside of his eye to inspect them for yourself.

“You aren’t nervous?” The words fell out faster than you could cover your mouth with wide eyes.

Kuroo shrugged, and held you closer. You noticed a small tremble in his grip that you hadn’t before.

“I am,” he answered, “but I saw you staring at the stars earlier and I just…” He paused and looked into your eyes. There was a mixture of fear, embarrassment, affection and a whole lot of wonder that brought his face to life, and you tried to get your heart to resume its beating, even if your lungs failed you for a bit. “…I want to see it again, your awe.”

He laughed, a little self-conscious, and looked away again. “So yeah, I’m nervous as hell.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

You tugged lightly at his hand, and he turned, just a little, to look. A little was enough.

Both of your faces were aflame, but so was the rapid beating of your heart when you slowly pulled back from his lips. There was a long moment of stunned silence, where you couldn’t believe you just did that, and he couldn’t believe you just did that either, but it didn’t matter for too long, because Kuroo pressed a hand lovingly against your cheek and pulled you back in for another one.

“I wasn’t really looking at the stars,” you confess later. You could still taste him on your lips, his deceptively soft, and your hand curled around his even tighter. “I was kind of just staring at them in your eyes.”

You didn’t need to look up to feel the amused grin on his face.

“My eyes?”

“…Don’t say it.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” he grinned.

You sighed. Even to your ears, it sounded more fond than frustrated and you felt a blush rise swiftly to your face again.

He hummed quietly next to you and for a while, just like that, the both of you kept the stars company. 

“Would you like me to bring a telescope next time?” He suddenly asked.

“Really?” You sat up straight and stared at him. Kuroo only smiled softly and reached out to twirl a small tuft of hair around his finger.

“Really.”

He jumped at your small excited cheer, but simply decided on laughing along with you at his surprise and your enthusiasm, his hand never leaving yours for a second.

Kuroo pressed a soft kiss to your cheek and beamed. “I’ll take that as a yes, then.” 


	24. Tsukishima fights very passionately and says rather mean things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** General assholery
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> scenario w tsukki where the s/o (female pronouns) is an absolute fireball and they are always arguing constantly non stop and their entire relationship just runs on pure passion and theyre having an argument and he says something along the lines of 'but im not afraid to hurt you' or something  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Jesus Christ, I don’t know if this is passionate or toxic. Either way, it was incredibly intense to write, and honestly, I loved every second. Thank you for requesting this, and I hope you enjoy the drama!_

There are moments where sparks turn into flames, and before we know it, the whole house burns down.

Like fireworks, for example. They’re small, tiny packages of potential, and you buy it because you know that with the right amount of ignition, it will be beautiful at night. A wonder, something for you experience with your close ones, or to be shared, or even in private. Colours that burst and ignite all the lines of the evening clouds in one explosion.

It was supposed to be beautiful, just like fireworks.

You know what the worst part of a relationship is? When nobody is wrong. When everything is wrong at the same time.

Even fireworks burn out. It lasts for a wondrous few seconds, and you think it’s the most gorgeous sight you’ve ever seen, and then it fizzles out, leaving the sky in its original form.

Is that what beauty is? If something is to be beautiful, like art, does it have to end?

Sometimes, it most certainly feels that way. When an animal is forced into a corner, the only way is out. They never have quiet discussions, or solemn, meaningful disagreements. When they fight, he sees colours. Most of the time it’s red, but it’s all the different shades of red, pink, purple, and sometimes blue that bleeds in from the edges and it makes him dizzy from all the sensations.

It’s thrilling, and he doesn’t even get to feel this way when he’s playing volleyball. The only time he gets to feel so incredibly alive is when it’s with her, and it’s happening again.

He can’t quite make up his mind, whether or not he loves or hates this. It’s a revolt from his lips against his heart, and the things he says are said, without thought, and full of feeling. He knows, however, that he hates it when he sees those feelings burn her. Then it’s just all blue, and it’s cold, and it’s not a shade he wants to see.

Right now it’s still red, so he dares to take another breath.

“I swear to God sometimes you can’t read for shit. I told you that I’d be busy tonight, don’t you fucking blame it on me.”

He doesn’t know if she sees their relationship the same way he does, but she’s a searing scarlet.

He watches as her lips form words that he knows will sting him.

“I read just fine, asshole-”

“-name-calling? Really?” He sneers at her, and his canines are as sharp as his glare, “I thought I was dating better.”

She jerks forwards, her arm moving unnaturally like she’s trying to stop herself from punching him. He doesn’t blame her.

“I dare to you say that again, Tsukishima Kei, because you won’t be dating this piece of shit for much longer if you do.”

He just scoffs. “You heard me. Or can’t you hear either?”

“I’d go deaf if it means I don’t have to listen to your bullcrap any longer. Can’t you hear yourself? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Me? You’re the one nagging me day after day and bitching about how I never spend time with you-”

“ _-you fucking don’t, you dick._ ”

“That’s because I have a  _life_ ,” he leans backwards against the wall and stretches out precisely in a way that he knows she hates. “I’m not like you, I actually do things with my time.”

She calms a little, and he feels himself tensing. This is one thing he loves about her- she’s utterly his equal when it comes to fights, and he has the scars on his heart to prove it. She’s gearing up, and it hurts no less with mental preparation.

“Sleeping with girls and calling them things? What a heartless man you are. I bet you don’t even call them back, do you?”

“What are you-”

She comes at him with a ton of bricks disguised as nonchalance. Bricks? Maybe a dagger. It most certainly feels like one.

“I wondered before, why you never pick up my calls or answer my texts. I thought I knew you, so cheating never crossed my mind, but maybe I’ve been stupid.” She leans forwards, into his space, into his heart and twists. “Because you’re a man who loves to  _exceed expectations_ , aren’t you? You act like you hate me so much, I wouldn’t be surprised if you forced it up just to spite me with another girl.”

It comes out before he can really mean it.

“Don’t think I’m too afraid to hurt you.”

When she laughs, without a second of hesitation, he stops breathing. It’s blue, it’s all blue, it feels too deep and terrifying, and she didn’t even pause. She  _expected_  him to say something like this, something no man in love would ever say. It’s so blue, and he’s so alone.

Her eyes are burning even brighter.

“What are you going to do that you haven’t been doing already? Hit me?”

“Are you asking me to?”

“Yeah,” she smirks, and it’s an iron wall around her, “sure. Go ahead. You know you want to.”

He doesn’t say anything. His hands don’t move an inch, and he’s all spent. She’s burnt enough for the both of them.

She presses right up to him, no longer smiling.

“I fucking dare you to hit me, Kei.”

There’s a second, where he tries. He really tries. He’s never wanted something so badly before, and it consumes him, this one act of unforgivable violence.

He crashes into her as hard as he can. His hands are gripping her shoulders so hard that it leaves bruises the shape of his fingers for the next few days, and he blocks out anything that isn’t the sound of her. They’re fighting still, lips on lips, tongue against tongue, and he tells her exactly how much he fucking hates her sometimes with each tender press against her, and he feels her melt into him with the exact same amount of rage.

This is it, he thinks, and he feels her furious tears against his cheek, this is when the sky lights up with fireworks. It’s everything promised, all the noise and the hues and the blinding light bursting from the darkness of night. They never mention the heat. The way it marks you if you stand too close, scorches you if you’re a second too late.

She still looks defiant and angry when they pull apart. He reaches out and messily smudges away the rest of her tears. For a moment, it looks like she’s trying not to laugh at his terrible attempt.

“You’re a goddamn asshole,” she says.

It’s okay, even if it takes more ignition each time, even if he’ll always be frightened that they’ll explode before they can take off into the sky, today it fizzles out. Back into the quiet. Back into the starry sky.

They have a few more fireworks yet.

“Yeah,” he says, “I know.” 


	25. Mafia AU with Kuroo where he pranks his s/o

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hello, i just read your mafia/yazuka au and its so good i loved it! and i thought of another scenario for a mafia au with like kuroo becuase i just think it would suit him best but what if you did one with his civilian s/o and he always tells her to lock the door and shit and shes always like yeayeayea whatever and then one day he tricks her because she doesnt look the door and he pretends that hes someone else and goes into the house and tries to take her like as a joke? kinda to 'teach her a lesson’ kinda thing but he accidentally scares the absolute crap out of her ? sorry if this is too specific and im not giving you enough freedom of creativity to write aahh  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Thank you! I’m not quite sure how this turned out actually, but it was a good chortle I had while writing. I hope you enjoy some more silly. :)_

Kuroo, right before he leaves the house for work in the morning, sticks the post-it to the front door. The words ‘LOCK THE DOOR’ are printed, with almost technological accuracy, on the note with a sharpie. He practiced for this. He’s never seen such beautiful capital letters in his life and honestly, he’s rather chuffed at a job well done. All that’s left is for you to actually listen to him, for once in your life, before you get nicked right out of your own living room because knowing you, it’s gonna happen sooner or later.

The door clicks shut behind him as he takes a step into the street. Dawn’s barely broken, but he’s all stern, focused and unforgiving, ready for another grueling day. It’s not that he doesn’t like his work, but when one decides to climb the metaphorical stairway of yakuza-success, enjoyment is something you learn to put away quickly.

There’s always you, his unfairly carefree love of his life, to look forward to at the end of a long day.

 

* * *

 

He’s gotta hand it to you, he thinks as he faces the door again eight hours later, you’re nothing if not consistent. He wouldn’t call you stubborn, but you’re that particular blend of agreeing, and then absolutely forgetting. Sometimes it works in his favour, when he fucks up, but then there’s actual home safety and Kuroo’s pretty sure there’s a physical pamphlet about that somewhere that came with the house.

It was a 50/50 chance, he swears later, but he’s proud to say he came prepared this time and a  _tiny_  bit pleased you didn’t disappoint. Pulling up the thick black scarf he has around his neck at all times, it regretfully covers his shit-eating grin, crooked with a childlike anticipation, and he pushes open the front door. It’s unlocked, as always, and he makes a note of how well the hinges are actually oiled; it barely makes a noise, combined with his rather illegal set of skills.

What do you know, this house is actually prime material for actual robbers. Well, actual robbers who  _intend_  to rob the place. His socks make absolutely no noise whatsoever as they glide peacefully across the polished floor, and the stairs make almost negative sound as he takes each step. His long limbs stretch gracefully to three steps at a time, nothing about his movements can be called clumsy or lanky. Kuroo is fully aware that he’s a whopping 187 centimeters of beauty and grace, and he’s sure as hell about to rub all that in your face.

Long fingers rest delicately on the state-of-the-art banister, and he pushes himself fully in one fluid movement. He takes a moment, breathing in through his face mask, to appreciate how silent everything in the world is compared to the racket you’re making in the bathroom.

You’ve been dating for five years, engaged for two, and to this day Kuroo still has absolutely no idea what you do in there that sounds like a rhino giving a particularly enthusiastic lap dance.

 _Time to find out_ , he grins and strikes.

He must look like a slightly overexcited panther, in his complete suit of black fabric that hugs his calves to perfection. His usual bed head is covered underneath another makeshift wrap, leaving only his keen eyes, golden and far too enthused for anyone’s good.

You don’t get to notice any of it.

The hairdryer in your hand is wrenched out unceremoniously and there’s a hand over your mouth before your eyes can even widen. It’s a full three seconds of complete paralysis, and a ridiculous part of your imagination shrieks that it’s your shadow finally revolting against you for all the years of being stepped on.

The large black figure tosses you over his shoulder- it’s too muscular and angular to be a female, you notice that at least- and Kuroo has to hold in a wince at the scream that still rips itself from your throat, even if your mouth is covered. He marvels, as he bounds back down the stairs with you carried like a sack, at how much noise can come out of such a small container. It’s like the northern winds have been set free of their earthly bounds. Maybe he’s dating a banshee? You certainly look like one sometimes, in the mornings.

He only makes it to the doorway of the living room before your survival instincts actually kick in, and the winds have finished their escape ceremony. Kuroo’s actually rather impressed and very happy as he drops you to dodge a furious elbow to the head. You show no signs of stopping- pausing only to take a deep breath, your eyes are narrowed with unnatural focus and Kuroo actually has to take a violent step back to evade a back hook kick at his face. He reaches out quickly, snatching your ankle out from midair and he’s about to grab your shoulder to  _calm you the fuck down_  but you’re having none of it. He thinks he hears a faint crack when you twist mid-hop to slam the back of your left fist against his cheek.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he coughs, and he thinks he tastes a little blood. “Were you always this violent?”

In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have said that because you don’t even wait to slam a fist angrily into his gut. It doesn’t knock him anywhere, but it does cause him to stagger, all the air forced out of his lungs in one go.

Kuroo looks up at you mid-groan, and grins.

“You look gorgeous when you’re angry, you know that?”

Uh, you didn’t think so. Half your hair is mussed from the way he tossed you around, and the other half is still wet because  _someone_  decided to interrupt you mid blow-dry.

“Dude, are you fucking serious,” is all you manage to say and he cracks up.

“I can’t,” he splutters mid cackle, his lips stretched into one of his insufferable grins, “I can’t believe you still remember your jujitsu from ages ago, holy  _crap_.”

Your voice is about as dynamic as a pancake. “Even your goodbye kisses are ‘keep safe’, Tetsurou. I’m actually not capable of forgetting that I’m in mortal danger all the time.”

“You  _are_ , I just proved it!”

You stare at him. He stares right back. It’s the world’s most unproductive non-verbal conversation ever.

“Are you serious,” you choose to repeat.

Kuroo just grins some more, now standing back up straight and looking down at you. “You’re smiling,” he points out.

So you are. You sigh heavily and make to go back upstairs to finish your hair, but Kuroo wraps a large hand around your wrist and spins you back into him. You crash into his chest with a loud ‘oomph’ and your nose is a little sore. He has a very firm chest.

Kuroo leans down to press a firm kiss on your cheek before you can wriggle back out of his grasp, and you can’t help but laugh.

“Alright,” he can hear the fondness in your voice and the resulting endless exasperation from it, and all of it makes him so incredibly warm. Your voice is still muffled into his shirt but he doesn’t care a bit. You’re still smiling. “Welcome home, you dork.” 


	26. Caught being bullied, ft. third years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Bullying
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> okay idk if i alreayd asked this or not so if i did completely ignore this!! but i was thinkig of a bit of an unusual one where this girl is really good friends with the whole volleyball team (mainly 3rd years) like extremely close and shes sassy and v smol and v cute and shes basically like the little sister to all of them and one day during volleyball practice they see her outside getting bullied by some guys at the school? like even physically? but shes v stubborn so she refuses to admit it?  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Ten years later I offer you your completed request. Sigh. Thank you for waiting so long, and although I know your original request wanted me to write for all the Karasuno members, it was a little much for me so I put most of my focus into making the third years’ a little longer. I hope you like it, and if you want more, feel free to send in another request for the other members and I’ll get to them later._

**Suga**  catches you mid-shove, mid-argument. It takes a few moments for him to process the entirety of the situation, staring at you crumpled in the crook of his arms, but he sees red quickly enough that it shows on his kind features.

“ _Fuck off_ ,” his voice takes on the edge of tempered steel and the guys, those group of miserable teenage boys that never seem to give you any rest until you’re as miserable as they are, don’t even take a second to look back at you as they scramble away, tripping over their heels in a rush to get away from the furious man.

It’s your first time hearing Suga, your always smiling, always loving senior, speak with enough rage to set a river on fire. The most you’ve heard him say is anything in jest, or frustration, or usually something snarky at Daichi, but this- this sets you on edge. He holds your arms up as you fumble your way back upright, your heel slipping a few times on the cool concrete ground. You don’t look up, choosing to turn away once your arms are freed.

“Hey,” Suga stops you before you can take your first step. His voice has lost most of the anger from earlier, probably out of fear of scaring you away, but in the stifled silence between the two of you, it doesn’t take much effort to hear the simmering frustration.

You turn, awkwardly. You meet his eyes, and they sting you with a keen sense of shame. “It was nothing,” you offer weakly.

Suga narrows his eyes and takes a step closer to you. He knows you, far too well, to let you go. To let you even think about running away from the obvious.

“Being shoved over doesn’t seem like nothing.”

“They just wanted me to buy them some drinks, that’s all,” you insist.

Those pair of perfectly sculpted eyebrows raise to match the equally disbelieving purse of his lips, and you start to feel your fingers tighten into rebellious fists. “So they asked nicely, did they?” Suga relentlessly drills.

Your sharp inhalation of air hurts with the suddenness of it, and the cold stings your throat. Well, it could be the cold, but it could also be the angry, humiliated tears that threaten to spill out the corner of your eyes. The view of Suga’s face is blurring, and you take a few moments to will the tears back behind your eyes.

It doesn’t work, and one slips.

You brush it away furiously, and your lower lip starts to tremble. Suga flinches a little at the hurt on your face, and belatedly, reaches out a steadying hand on your left cheek. His fingers feel cool against your blotchy skin, you can’t help but notice.

“Sorry. I just-” he cuts himself off, his tongue and mind fighting each other for the words to say, and you feel his fingers curl in a little against your cheek. He looks terribly frustrated, and his protectiveness stretches out behind him for miles on end in those hazel eyes. “I just can’t believe that they did something like this on school grounds.” He stares at you. “I can’t believe you want to hide it, too.”

Your words come out faster than you can think them, and your voice starts to crack underneath the weight of your stress. “I- I didn’t  _want_  you to know. I wasn’t trying to protect them, unless I’ve actually gone completely masochistic-”

“It’s okay,” Suga interrupts, hand pressing closer now, “you’re blabbering.”

“Right,” you sigh. “I just… didn’t want to make trouble, that’s all. I know you’d be, y’know,” you wave a hand vaguely at his expression, “ _this_.”

The exasperated huff from Suga could probably satisfy a whole day’s worth of angry sighs. You’re forcefully pulled into him, your cheek bumping his sweaty volleyball shirt, and Suga wraps his arms around your head like he hasn’t decided whether or not it’s a hug or a headlock. You wisely choose to stay as you are.

“Now you’re just being stupid. What do you think friends are for? Honestly.”

That brings a small huff of laughter to your now salt-tinged lips, and you feel Suga respond in kind against the crown of your head. Quietly, you relax into his hold and allow yourself, just for one moment, to clutch onto him for help.

“Yeah,” you mumble into his shirt, “I know. Stupid, remember?”

 

* * *

 

You can feel it when they stare. It tickles the back of your neck each time, like the ghost of the day creeping its fingers down your nape, chilling you from the flesh down. It wasn’t so bad at first, and you weren’t unused to stares because of how often you hung around **Asahi** , and the stares naturally came with. So did the hushed whispers behind sly hands.

They chose a day you were without him. Asahi had dropped you off somewhere between the volleyball and tennis courts, offering a cheery wave of the hand and you watched with a pleased grin as he and Noya painted a comical picture next to each other.

You didn’t have much of a reprieve between the sudden tickling feeling and a harsh shove against your shoulder. A wince escapes your clenched teeth when you hit the concrete pillar behind you, and your bag drags the strap harshly across your shoulder blade. They’re watching your every move, and you feel more rage at the fact that you can’t do anything against four guys by yourself than anything else.

One of them grinds their heel on the bridge of your foot, and another laughs from behind.

“Don’t have your bodyguard with you today?” The laughing one grins behind a devilishly attractive face.

You don’t hesitate. “No,” you snarl, “he’s got other things to do- kinda like your balls.”

For a single, satisfying moment, you watch them recoil with surprise. It doesn’t last long enough however, and another shoves you flat onto the ground. He towers over you, hovering between your legs and you push yourself backwards as far as you can.

He bends down, and sneers at you. “Oh, we’ve got ‘em. Did you want to feel them too?”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s the idea,” he laughs, “fucking slut. That’s what you do all the time with your giant, right?”

“We just study, mostly.” You almost tear up with relief and shame at the same time when that familiar, gravelly voice booms from behind you. It’s a lot louder than you’ve ever heard Asahi, but he’s not shaking, he’s not trembling, and he’s as solid as the pillar behind you.

Quickly, you push yourself to your feet, keeping your back stuck to the wall and give the four boys a filthy stare. They pause, their smug grins wavering a little on their frozen faces, and finally the laughing one throws an arm out. The other three nod, reluctantly, and they each back off like lions having lost their prey.

The relief fades away quickly to make way for a flood of embarrassment. You can feel that your friend is looking at you, probably with that intense, accusing stare he’s always so good at but you simply can’t meet his eyes. You hoist your bag up your shoulder, and slowly back away with your head held low.

“Does this happen often?”

You don’t look up. “Not really.”

“They said something about me, didn’t they? About my size.” He places a hand on your forearm, and you note that it barely takes him any effort to bridge that gap you had so determinedly widened between the two of you. Your shoes shift, and you point your toes stubbornly away.

“It’s nothing. They weren’t after you, anyway.”

“But they were after  _you_ , because of me,” he says. It’s with such earnestness, a soft broken-hearted declaration that tugs at you and refuses to let you leave. You can feel the angry blush that heats up your cheeks and you furiously meet his eyes, finally. They’re as conflicted as he sounds and you struggle to not look away. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“They’re just a bunch of kids,” you tell him, desperately, “this stuff happens in high school all the time, you shouldn’t take it so seriously. It’s really nothing-”

“-you were pushed over,” Asahi interrupts, and you glance down at large fingers tightening around your arm. “It’s not nothing, it happened when I left you alone. Why won’t you say it? Why are you running away?”

You’re shaking, thrown completely off balance by the sudden honesty and directness that you haven’t been expecting from Asahi- that you can’t give back in return. His eyes are bright now, his lips pursed, and he looks exactly like he’s in a match, and he’s at his peak. You open your mouth and shut your eyes at the same time. They’re squeezed tight, and you pretend that you can’t hear what you’re saying.

“Because I don’t want your protection,” you blurt, “you’re just my friend, you’re not supposed to hang around me because I’m not safe in my own school. Like, what is this even? I can’t even get away from four boys without you showing up.”

“So you weren’t even going to tell me if I hadn’t seen?” Asahi sounds so betrayed, and it kills you a little more inside.

“…Probably not,” you mumble.

There’s a moment of silence, and for some incomprehensible reason, he smiles. It’s not entirely cheerful, but it’s sad and accepting and it’s an offering of peace. You’re not quite sure why he’s the one giving you an out when it’s all your fault in the first place. You don’t say anything, however.

“I see,” he murmurs, half to you, and half to himself. He pulls at your arm gently, and you follow without protest. The rest of the third years are already in the gym, shooting curious glances at the two of you, but Asahi doesn’t acknowledge them. You’re quietly sat down to one side, and he stands up straight and pats your head twice. He’s still smiling at you, and you still feel so utterly ashamed.

“I’ll walk you home afterwards,” he tells you.

You nod, and bury your face into the gap between your knees as he walks away to get ready for practice.

 

* * *

 

 **Daichi**  doesn’t actually catch you. You think a great deal about it- standing by the vending machine next to the gym where they’re about to finish practice and you’re pretty sure you look a right mess right now. Your knees are messed up- scraped up and the little streams of blood trickling down from dirty scratches on your arm just make it worse. You don’t exactly have a black eye, but your right cheek is swollen, and your eye feels like it’s throbbing along with your head. The only thing that the bullies haven’t touched is the grim purse of your lips.

You have precious minutes to decide. You can hear them shout from inside, ‘ _last toss!_ ’, and the organized thudding of sports shoes against the polished ground. You wipe the residual blood off the cut on your face with a swipe of your sleeve; another thing you’re going to have to find a way to explain.

Although… it’s a half-assed plan, and you’re pretty sure it’s going to fail, but damn if you’re going to just sit there and accept pity. It’s a quick and relatively painless sacrifice of your sweater (it’s a little chilly in the autumn but you don’t pay it mind) and you scrunch it up into a soft ball and you dab at your wounds viciously with it. It does the job, shabbily, but you can see the brightening of raw pink, and as you sit back to admire your absolutely pathetic handiwork, you think you can pass it off as having a tumble down some stairs.

You pretend your face doesn’t look like you’ve just got your wisdom teeth removed, and push the doors to the gym open enough for you to slip inside.

‘Slip’ being relative. The three third years spot you immediately, and even Coach Ukai gives you a small wave with how frequently you’re in here. You catch Asahi’s eye first- they widen, but he doesn’t say anything. It’s Suga’s next, and he’s about to open his mouth to say something, but he gives Daichi a quick glance and closes it, deciding to fix you with a stare that’s more incriminating than anything spoken.

You most definitely avoid Daichi’s gaze. It’s burning you with the subtlety of a brick, but you force a grin onto your face and hop over to the first years and offer to help them mop up. Hinata doesn’t say anything, only pausing for a second, and Kageyama only gives you a strange stare before shrugging. You pick up the proffered broom with desperation.

Halfway into your third push, you notice that you’re alone, and everyone’s migrated to the other side of the gym. You can predict the hand before you actually feel it. It’s full of accusation and it pours shame through you like a funnel.

“Your face,” Daichi remarks from behind your shoulder, his voice low and clear, “there better be a good story behind it.”

You shrug, pulling your shoulder from out of his grip. “Tripped. Those stairs really fucked me over on my way here.”

There’s a small lull long enough for a careful exhale, but the hand returns, and you stiffen underneath it. Daichi pulls and spins you around. His face is straight, poker, and the only thing that gives away his anger is the deep furrow of his brows and the tenseness underneath his eyes. It’s not something you would have even noticed if you hadn’t been friends with him for as long as you have.

“You’re so small,” he says.

You raise an eyebrow and rest your free hand on your hip.

“And you’re so tall. Your point?”

“My point,” he intones, “is that there are kids in this school shitty enough to beat up someone so small.”

You flinch, and pull away completely from him. He holds his hand out where it was, and watches it and you with an almost amused glance before meeting your eyes with the same frustration as earlier. You know, that he knows that you’re angry about something entirely different, and it makes you even more tense.

“I can take care of myself,” you declare. You sound as confident as you feel, which is not very, but you’re not about to back down underneath Daichi’s firm glare. He drops his hand, and the two of you watch each other in stressful tension. Somehow, even though you have a large broom in your hand, Daichi still manages to feel the more intimidating of the two of you. It only takes a few minutes for him to wither first, however.

“Alright,” he sighs, almost resignedly. It loosens no muscles in your back, but when he takes a few steps forward to cup your swelling jaw with almost familial affection, you huff into the palm of his hand.

Not for a second do either of you believe that this is going to be the end of the subject. He’s going to be keeping an eye on you from now on, and you’re going to be on the watch for any Daichi-shaped shadows lurking about, but you figure there are worse things to watch out for.

“It looks like it really hurts,” he murmurs softly. “Do you want first aid?”

You shake your head and pull his hand down with your own. They fall into a light hand-hold between the two of you, and you squeeze his fingers in a reluctant thanks- thanks that he cares, thanks that he isn’t pressing the issue.

“Don’t worry about it. Here, let’s start cleaning up.”

He smiles at you, a little exasperatedly, but it brings back a small smirk to your face.

“On it,  _captain_.” 


	27. The HQ/Voltron Crossover that nobody asked for

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I finally had a day off to actually sit down and sleep, breathe and write, and… well… I’ll just quietly leave this here…
> 
> -
> 
> _“Let’s check the rift exit positioning monitor to see where this wormhole’s taking us. …Urgh. This is so boring.”_
> 
> Bored like Coran? Come see if you agree with the product of my side-tracked-ness: Voltron Legendary Defender, Captains Version! Buckle in, this is gonna be a very strange ride, no refunds allowed.  
> Featuring Ushiwaka as the Black Paladin, HEYHEYHEY as the Red Paladin, Bedhair as the Blue Paladin, Dad as the Yellow Paladin and the Great King as the Green Paladin!

**BLACK LION: USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI**

“Focus. We need to become Voltron.”

“You know,  _Leader_ , you could really do with some enthusiasm.”

Ushijima pauses and stares down at his dash, seemingly lost in sudden thought. There’s silence on the comm, and Oikawa thinks he can hear his heart leap into his throat. Okay, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to diss the black lion before trying to merge, but-

“Okay, I’ll try again.” Ushijima clears his throat. “Focus! Listen to your lions, and we can do this. Let’s become Voltron!”

Kuroo snickers really loudly through the comm and Bokuto starts cracking up. Daichi offers an encouraging ‘nicely done!’ and Oikawa can breathe again, with a huge bonus cringe.

They try again, completely distracted from trying to get Ushijima to say as many motivating phrases as possible within the shortest period of time, and Voltron doesn’t happen until five hours later when they’re all snickered out.

Ushijima just walks out of his lion and offers them all a solemn thumbs up for a job well done.

Oikawa sniffs at the gesture, as he always does, and Ushijima just offers him an approving nod.

“You did good,” he tells him.

Oikawa eyes him critically. “Thanks to your constant encouragement.”

“I’m glad it helped.”

“That’s just-  oh, nevermind.” Oikawa sighs heavily and beckons for the others to follow him ahead.

Ushijima walks last, falling back as he watches the backs of his team as they make their way back to base. There’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to do this again next time they practice, but he believe that they’ll come together when they need to. They always do.

 

* * *

 

**RED LION: BOKUTO KOUTAROU**

Whenever anyone calls for Bokuto and he doesn’t show up within two minutes, he’s usually found dancing outside in his red lion, doing somersaults and weird feint maneuvers. Today’s no different, and Kuroo almost loses an arm waving at the crazy man in a robot.

“Dude, you gotta give Red a break,” Kuroo pats his friend on the shoulder. Bokuto just shrugs and grins. He slings an arm over Kuroo’s own shoulders. It’s hard to walk like this in space, they discover.

“It’s all good, Red doesn’t complain and I think he’s having a load of fun!”

“Is he?”

“…I think so. He should be! He doesn’t say anything to me about needing a break.”

“Yeah, that might be ‘cus he’s about to  _break_.”

“…Man, that’s so lame.” Kuroo just sniggers and Bokuto joins in.

Oikawa predictably has an aneurysm patching Red up again for the sixteenth time, and Daichi only gets on quietly with the maintenance work and chortles at Bokuto’s attempts at using Oikawa as a dart board.

Bokuto himself, just entertains everyone with a bright grin on his face until Red’s all fixed, and everyone’s dusting off their hands from hard work. He watches, with his determined enthusiasm, as his friends shout, groan, laugh and make fun of the lions and each other.

They’re paladins, and this peace isn’t going to last forever. They’re the ones who have to sacrifice the most- as the pilot with the most expected of him, he finds that happiness is more and more difficult to come by.

Still, he finds a way. Bokuto’s good if everyone’s good, and today, well. Today is really good. Everyone’s smiling, just the way he needs it to be.

 

* * *

 

**BLUE LION: KUROO TETSUROU**

Despite the fact that he’s mostly found lounging around with a face-mask on during rest hours, Ushijima finds himself most often occupied with Kuroo’s requests to train together.

He dodges a ferocious kick to the chest, and Kuroo simply aims, with a calculating glance, at Ushijima’s open knee instead. The black lion’s pilot doesn’t cry out in pain, but he does stagger to the floor and holds up a hand for a break. Kuroo only nods briskly before relaxing and offering his friend a hand to help him back up.

Ushijima silently rubs at his knee.

“Too hard?”

“I’m fine,” Ushijima answers. Kuroo exhales and shrugs.

“Have you ever considered piloting the black lion, Kuroo?”

Kuroo looks back, surprised. “No, why?”

“You’ve got leadership material. You’re a hard worker. Nobody trains here more than you do.”

Kuroo just laughs and takes a seat next to Ushijima. He offers an open water bottle for the other, and Ushijima takes a hefty gulp from it.

“Yeah,” Kuroo just says, “but I’m not the best. I just do what I can.”

“Dedication means a lot more than pure talent.”

“Not when you’re a paladin.”

“Kuroo-”

“I know what you want to say,” Kuroo’s face looks tired, his mouth turned up into a grim smile. “I’ve thought about it all, but I’m here now doing what I choose to.”

The look in his eyes tell Ushijima that the subject’s dropped for now, so he quietly asks about his new defense technique.

 

* * *

 

**YELLOW LION: SAWAMURA DAICHI**

Nobody can tell Daichi to stop, not even Ushijima. He comes back from each fight battered, the most bruised, and the one that’s taken the most damage for the team. He’s always the last to come out of the healing pods, and the rest of the team take turns to watch over him. Bokuto stays the most nights.

“You’re going to catch a cold if you don’t bring along a blanket,” he says, because the first thing he sees when he steps out is Bokuto curled up in a cat like position on the floor, snoring quietly.

Bokuto jumps up, startled, and Daichi just starts laughing when his eyes widen. “You’re up!”

“Yeah,” Daichi grins, “and so are you. Each time, huh?”

“‘Cus, well, I mean… you take all the stuff we should have taken for us so…” Bokuto teeth nip at his bottom lip, uncertain, bashful. When Oikawa’s voice slides in from behind a corner, Bokuto sags with relief.

“…So you need to take better care of yourself.” Oikawa’s voice softens, and Daichi watches him, his face solemn. “And… we- the team, owes you this, at least.”

Daichi’s stern expression melts into an affectionate smile, and he grips onto Bokuto’s wrist lightly, tugging him along. He takes Oikawa’s unwilling one too, and the two of them trail behind him as he heads towards their quarters.

“Get some rest, you two.” Daichi pushes them lightly towards their rooms. His smile is blinding with its warmth, and his hands feel solid against their backs. “As long as you guys are okay, taking naps in the pod is more than fine by me.”

 

* * *

 

**GREEN LION: OIKAWA TOORU**

It’s too late into the night, and Oikawa’s quietly tinkering away at his station. His fingers are cold from the energy-saving mode the castle falls back on when everyone’s asleep, and the computer screen is the only thing that lights up the room, making the soft flicks of his hair seem almost purple in the dim lighting.

“Stop working, jesus christ, Oikawa, and go get some sleep for once.”

The voice shocks him out of his seat, but neither Kuroo nor Daichi show any sign of remorse from their inconspicuous place in the doorway. Oikawa ignores them and falls back into his seat.

“Well  _somebody’s_  got to upgrade your gear, otherwise with your level of synchronisation we’d be Galra feed before you can say ‘Voltron’.”

“Yeah, yeah, we got it,” Kuroo tosses an energy bar at his head. Daichi calmly snatches it out of the air before it can hit Oikawa and drops it in his lap quietly.

Oikawa does, to his credit, unwrap it and stuff it into his mouth. He tosses the wrapper onto the floor, and Daichi lets out a sigh when he bends over to pick it up. His voice is lower and firmer than Kuroo’s, and it sends chills down Oikawa’s spine. “You can’t work all the time, Tooru. If you don’t sleep, your condition will just be worse when we need you at a hundred.”

“Are you the dad I never had?”

“ _Tooru_.”

“Alright, alright,” Oikawa wearily slides the headpiece off his crown and places it down far gentler than the wrapper. His eyes are bloodshot, and both Kuroo and Daichi give him a gentle press on the shoulder before he finally leaves the room for the night.


	28. Kuroo's s/o confronts their father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hey, hope you're doing well. but um, i'm not at the moment and i kinda need some comfort haha. so this one's kinda personal, but can you please write a scenario where s/o's confronting her dad about never wanting to see him again bc he's never been there and the entire time kuroo's been waiting outside (bc she insists on doing it alone) and when things start to take a turn for the worst, she storms out and stays with him for the night?  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I got to work writing this immediately after I saw your request, and even though I’m a little over my posting time I hope this helps you at least a little. The dynamics of the characters itself might not be what you relate to, but, I hope you find some kind of comfort tonight._
> 
> You’re going to be okay.

“You’re home.”

“Of course, honey,” he laughs without looking, “it’s my house.”

You can feel the closed front door like an anchor behind you, dragging your spirit lower and lower by the ankle, leaving ugly, purple marks all over your legs like mauled meat. There’s no going back, it tells you, and there’s no escape. It’s do or die, because if you don’t do, it’s only going to kill you bit by bit on the inside.

Who knew that something you wanted to say so badly, would be the most difficult to actually leave your lips?

“It’s really late,” you quietly say, “it’s almost one in the morning.”

He finally turns at your words, those almond-shaped, green eyes you see every morning in your own face reflected back at you. It looks like a desert behind them. “Asking me why I’m not in bed yet? Aren’t you quite the adult now?”

The heat is burning you alive, and the dryness is parching your throat. You swallow, in vain, and the air scrapes your throat raw on its way down.

“You’re supposed to be the one asking me why I’m home so late.”

The smile fades from his face, and suddenly the spatula he’s wielding looks more like a weapon, frozen in his single-handed grasp and you realize you can’t take a step back. Your spine is already pressed as close as it can get against the heavy mahogany door, and your palms flat against it. Your father chooses not to move forwards. His knees are tense, bent, and it reminds you of being hunted down.

“Look,” he says to you, “what has your mother been saying about me again? Don’t you teach me how to be a father when you’re the one wandering in so late at night.”

You’re not the one who’s supposed to teach him anything. If it’s possible to rain inside a mind, it’s a downpour for you, hollowing out a space in your head just so it can pool and you can drown in it.  _You’re just a kid_ , you feel reality dig sharply into your side.  _This man has not taught you anything in his life, except for how it’s like to live without a father._

You inhale sharply through your nose, and it stings. “I’m leaving,” you tell him.

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere where I’m wanted.”

“How can you say that?” He asks, slowly, dully. You had perhaps imagined he’d rush towards you, in a slight frenzy or at least mild worry when you said something like that to him. Your father simply stands there. There’s almost disinterest colouring his voice, and you watch his fingers tap irritably against the spatula. “I’m legally bound to keep you here while you’re still underage.”

“You did that to spite mom.” You raise your eyes to look right into his. They’re unchanging, as always. “You got custody because you could.”

“Is that what she told you?”

You shake your head. “It’s what you tell me, each time I come home.”

He says nothing, and you say nothing. The opposite of love is indifference, and you’ve become intimately acquainted with the inside and outs of that phrase over the course of a barren childhood. Years of going elsewhere, to your mother, to your friends, to your best friend who’s waiting outside for you, because you asked him to. You couldn’t imagine your father doing something like that for you. You couldn’t even imagine your father cooking you breakfast, with that ugly, wooden spatula of his.

“I’m not going to let you go off by yourself,” he waves his hand sternly at you, “you’re going to get me into a lot of trouble.”

“Haven’t I already?” You see his mouth fall open in slight shock- shock that you might have actually called authorities for some inexplicable reason, “I’m in the way. You prefer me out late because it means you can fuck that woman you’ve always been so into. You even butter up to her kid. I’ve just been trouble to begin with.”

“ _How dare you_ -”

“Fuck you,” you say. Inflectionless and emotionless, you are completely drained- of affection, of fear, of anything, because in this moment, you barely exist. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving, so don’t you look for me. I never want to see your face again.”

It incenses him. You can see the rage on his face, and rage is more sincere than anything he’s ever shown you, and he advances, step by step. His arms are reaching out towards you, narrowing the gap between man and beast, and you stifle the sudden urge to scream.

Those hands latch onto your shoulders, icy and piercing, and you’re being shaken with every word that he says. Your head hurts, he thumps it against the door and you wish you didn’t exist. “I  _fed_  you, I gave you a place to sleep, who do you think gives you a roof on your head? When your mother can’t even afford the floor she sleeps on- who do you think keeps you  _alive_??”

The door suddenly opens behind you, a vague memory that you didn’t lock it shoots through your mind, but as you topple backwards with all the wrath of a fully grown man pushing you to the ground, a pair of arms catch you firmly around your waist. You’re pushed back upwards with a forceful heave, and your father is thrown backwards with the sudden momentum.

Planting a foot firmly into the damp ground behind you, you wrench off his grip on your shoulders. Your chest is heaving with exertion, adrenaline and all the courage that’s been forced into you by the situation, but your father is barely fazed. He stands there, silent, the only thing that shows his struggle is a stray strand of black hair that falls from his coif and it’s the only thing that makes him look remotely human to you.

Not that you’d know. You don’t see him nearly enough to see him anything other than ‘fixed’.

You don’t say anything more. There’s nothing left for you to tell him, all the words you had planned have found their way out one way or another in that short exchange and now you’re just… you. Done. Finished. Once again, you don’t understand the look in your father’s eyes. Your eyes.

Taking the hand that’s hanging next to you, you give it a soft squeeze (your father doesn’t even glance up at the man beside you) and just like that, you walk away. One foot in front of the other.

You’re not stopped.

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Kuroo finally says when you two hit the first traffic light. His fingers are wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, flexing at regular intervals as if to remind himself to stay relaxed. “How do you feel now?”

“Tired,” you don’t hesitate to reply. The car smoothly rumbles forwards and you stare steadfastly at the dashboard in front of him.

“We’re almost there,” he murmurs.

He parks, with quiet efficiency, and although the way to his flat is by no means new to you, it’s as silent as the car ride. The elevator lets out a ‘ding’ when it hits the seventeenth floor, and you wait, with your hands folded in front of you, as Kuroo reaches for his keys in his back pocket.

“You’re going to drop them one day if you keep them there.” You slide off your shoes with your heel and Kuroo shrugs while doing the same.

“Haven’t dropped them yet,” he replies.

Your socks pad against the waxed, wooden floor and he hands you a small cup of tea when you make yourself comfortable in his couch. He sits next to you, elbows resting on the other armrest and the two of you sit in peace. The digital fireplace flickers and licks at the dimness of the room, and you take a sip of your tea. Darjeeling.

“Live here,” the silence is broken, and Kuroo is watching you intently. He offers you escape like it’s nothing to him.

“You already offered the couch for me tonight,” you reply slowly.

He shakes his head and stretches an arm out in a way that makes you think of a panther. He’s still leaning away from you, but somehow, with all his limbs stretched out and dangling comfortably at various angles, you feel like he’s offering you comfort in a roundabout kind of way. It warm your face, and you move to hide it behind your hands.

“Bokuto’s moving out,” he tells you, “so there’ll be a free room. I haven’t thought of looking for people to replace him, so…” The corners of his mouth curl up a little, warm. “Live here.”

“I don’t have the money.”

Kuroo blinks. “I do.” You’re opening your mouth to tell him- “It’s not charity, okay,” he interrupts swiftly, “you can take extra shifts at the bookstore, and maybe I can bug Oikawa some more about getting us jobs at the cafe. You can pay it back.” He finally reaches out, a solid hand against your shoulder and you let yourself breathe out. Relaxing into his hold, you shift slightly closer.

“It’s going to take a long time, paying for this place with a bookstore and coffee job.”

“I got you.”

It’s slightly cracked, weak, but it’s a laugh nonetheless that comes out from your throat. “Alright, sugar daddy.”

His laugh is entirely different from yours- lazy and rich, he laughs like it’s a song he’s been aching to sing, despite being completely tone-deaf, and it makes you grin from ear to ear. He grabs you further and pulls you more against him.

“You’re so full of shit,” he grins at you.

Your shrug is faint, half-hearted, but he bumps against you anyway. The tension of tonight, your plan, is unraveled, and even though you feel like you could sleep for the next year, and at the same time not sleep for a week because of how tense you are, you at the very least, feel safe. Feel wanted. You nudge at the lax body beside you, and Kuroo just nudges you right back.

The words will come later. There will be nights where you question, where you doubt and where you probably will fight, but you’re out, and it’s done. Nights with bad movies and quiet conversations will come too, and along with that will be the time to talk about everything you might be still plagued with.

It will all come, in time. For tonight, you fall asleep like this, simply, against Kuroo’s sprawled body on the couch. 


	29. Tsukishima comforts his s/o after being compared to her perfect sisters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> could i have a scenario where tsukishima's s/o is bawling when she shows up at his place at l midnight because she has to older sisters(twins) who are 'perfect' in everyone's eyes and they said she was useless and couldn't do anything?? fluff please  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Because I am occasionally fluff-challenged, I hope this is fluffy enough- and I’m sorry if it isn’t! This turned out slightly more somber than I had intended, but the prompt seemed to commandeer itself, so this is where it went. I… also hope you don’t mind that somehow I ended up taking some liberties with the ‘showing up bawling’ part, because for some reason my brain just refused to picture Tsukishima’s s/o crying before speaking? Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and thank you for sending in a request. :)_

Somewhere inside him hurts when he opens the door for her, and the first thing that comes to mind is ‘ _it happened again_ ’. Her knuckles tapping against the hollowed wood, face drawn into herself and her lips, chewed and bruised from excessive worrying. Her eyes age each time he finds her by his door, but Tsukishima lets out a little exhale in relief, because she’s not crumpled by the door frame.

He steps aside to let her in, silently kneeling to slide her shoes off for her, her limbs trembling and hanging limp by her side. Tsukishima definitely doesn’t do this regularly, but he nudges the back of her knees gently, and when she folds, he slips his arms underneath her legs and her shoulders. He carries her like that, her face staring blankly at his chest, slowly into his empty living room.

The couch is cold to the touch, and Tsukishima watches her carefully out of the corner of his eye as she sits there, tired and limp, unresponsive to the temperature. He hands her a warm mug of hot chocolate, and the only sign of relief is her quiet smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“I’ll get you another blanket,” he murmurs to her. She glances into his face, searching for something that she seems to be unable to find and he’s stiff in his position. When the tears start to fall, he falls forwards, elbows resting uncomfortably on either side of her torso and he holds her. His fingers run over the streaks along her cheeks, his palm cradling her trembling jaw and his body hovering over her with as much protection he can give her against an invisible foe. Or rather, an unavoidable one.

Tsukishima presses soft kisses along her cheekbone, the side of her face where her hair frames the curve of her eyes. He sometimes wishes that he weren’t so uncomfortable with public affection, when he watches her fall apart in his arms, because the only time he seems to be able to show her how much he truly loves her is when she’s breaking.

The blanket completely forgotten, he pulls her into his lap- a heavy, laborious affair when she’s far too occupied with sobbing- and he shifts his neck to make space for her face that’s forced into the crook of it.

He doesn’t count the minutes, he doesn’t listen to the ticking seconds. He counts only in the number of breaths he feels she takes against his chest, and the way her hiccuping finally evens out into harsh inhales. She breathes again, and he does too, the binds around his heart loosening at the sight of her recovery.

He reaches out to smooth a thumb against the dark rings underneath her eyes. “What did they say to you this time?” He asks. She doesn’t try to deny it.

“Nothing. They didn’t say anything.”

“Your parents?”

She shakes her head. “They won trophies, for their judo and chess competitions. They had their ceremony today, so they brought their prizes home.”

Tsukishima pauses, his hand slowing to push the stray wisps of hair from her damp cheeks. The tears are still flowing, silently, like a fresh stream in winter, freezing as they go. “I see,” he says, lowly. He waits, one breath after another, for her to ease into her pain. He can see it writhe underneath her skin, stretching out the echoes like too little spread on too much bread. She struggles each time, in her own way, and this night it’s suffocation.

The words warm up his fingers as they leave her lips in a huff. “They looked at me,” she whispers.

Her voice is breaking again, and Tsukishima watches in silent offering.

“Everyone looked at me,” she’s shuddering now, her voice raising in pitch as she becomes her despair, “they all just stood there- staring- my sisters they-”

He brushes a firm hand along her back and she lets the rest hiccup out of her. “They smiled. They  _smiled_. Like I don’t  _know_  already that everyone in there hates me!”

“They don’t hate you,” Tsukishima mumbles into her hair, “but they’re terrible people, and they don’t deserve you.”

“Don’t they?” Her voice is shrill and low and everything between the earth and the sky, and Tsukishima feels his grip tighten, and his heart shatter, “they’re so much better. At everything, in every way that matters. I’ll never be anything- not like them, not like everyone wants me to.” A jittery breath. “I’m probably better for them this way. So I can at least be the comparison that makes everyone else happy about themselves.”

“ _I’m_  not happy,” he interrupts her. She startles, jerking her head up to eye him suspiciously. He stays firm, his face impassive, yet simultaneously earnest, and it makes him rumble with anger at how she can’t even believe such a thing. “ _You’re_  not happy either. You can’t sit around and feel miserable every day because these people can’t appreciate you. You definitely can’t let yourself be stepped on like this because you think this is easier than fighting.”

“I didn’t-”

“Hey,” he dips forwards in a single uncharacteristic motion and touches his lips against hers. “It doesn’t matter. I’m right, okay?”

She snorts, wetly. “You always think you’re right.”

“That’s because I am,” he replies easily. “Especially in this. Don’t tell me you believe them and not me.”

“I believe you,” she sniffs against his shirt.

He can’t quite yet feel her lighten or her shoulders ease, but they’re not shaking quite as much, and there’s a gentle peace that hangs in the air, like the morning after a thunderstorm. Tsukishima allows himself to lean his weight on the couch completely, and gently envelopes her as she melts against his pliant body. She’s nowhere near as tall or long as he is, so she fits snugly in all the empty spaces he has leftover.

She’s the one who threads their free hands together, and he’s the one who squeezes them tightly. His fingers, forever cold for some unfortunate reason, warm from her touch, her pulse throbbing above his own wrist. They’re pressed together like the remaining puzzle pieces, slotting neatly into the couch to make as quiet of a picture as possible.

Tsukishima feels his own heart slow when her breathing, and tears, finally subside. He remembers that he was supposed to grab a blanket for her, but he can’t move, so he settles on rubbing his hands up and down her back in an attempt to keep her warm.

“Would you like to sleep here tonight?” He whispers softly.

“I love you,” she only replies.

He smiles, a rare splitting of his lips that only ever happens around her. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Say it too, you ass.”

He chuckles this time. “I love you.”

She nods, satisfied, into his chest. He wonders briefly how she can breathe properly in such a position. “I’ll take you up on your offer, then.”

“Alright,” Tsukishima tells her, gently, like a caress, and he carefully slides his arms back underneath her prone body with some creative twisting. “Let’s get you to bed then.”

There isn’t a response, only the tightening of her arms around his neck as he picks her up the way he put her down earlier. His palms shaping against her firmly, he counts the thump-thumping of his covered feet over the stairs and, before he slides her underneath the sheets, closes the door behind them with a brisk tap of his ankle.


	30. Headcanons: Iwaizumi has a thing for chubbier girls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> i headcanon that iwaizumi hajime has a thing for short slightly more on the chubbier side girls where he thinks they're just so soft and sweet and they would be one of the people where he just melts for and i just wanted to get that out there to my favourite blog on tumblr also happy cny i wish you wealth and happiness and great health and welfare in your life <3  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Thank you so much for your well wishes and your flattery >////< I know what you’re up to! I wish you all the best too, and may you be happy and satisfied with this upcoming year. :) _

Here, have some chubs s/o Iwaizumi headcanons!

  * You can’t just grow up around people like Hanamaki, or Yahaba or  _Oikawa_  and be vain. Like, it’s just not spiritually possible. And Iwaizumi is really, really good at not being vain.
    * In fact, he just wants to get on with life, tbvh.
  * Soft? Sweet smiles and cheeky grins? He melts into a large puddle each time you shoot him one of those, glancing up from your height at his chin and looking out from under those lashes he can’t ever seem to see under.
    * He reaches out to hold you then- by the face, by your hands, by your waist- anything, as long as he can touch you because:
  * Iwaizumi is a very physical man. Don’t shoot him sly looks or knowing glances too much because he seriously has a lifetime supply being Oikawa’s neighbour. Just love him.  _Love him_.


  * Just stand, or sit, and let him run his rough, padded fingers all over the nooks and crannies along the planes of your skin. Let him hover slowly over your hips, ghost along the lines of your arms, tease across the smooth hills of your thighs and your butt (in  _jeans_ , he can’t get enough of it).
    * He’s such a confident, awkward creature that he literally stands in front of you and declares ‘please can I have my fill of you for the day’ with zero embarrassment, before school starts and he just crushes you against his chest until his you-quota is filled.
      * P.S. He asks for some recharging when the two of you walk home sometimes on the days he doesn’t have practice.
      * Not that you haven’t hung back before to wait for him.
  * He’s had his share of chocolates from lean, beautiful girls on Valentine’s day (they’re usually from tennis, or competitive swimming, and seriously, even if he liked them it’d be too much of a hassle to deal with the gossip), but they’re the same each year, same pink, same flowers.
    * He’s always loved yours the most. He remembers the first time he got a pack of dark chocolate beans in his locker and a gentle confession penned in cursive on floral yellow paper.
      * Of  _course_  he’d love dark chocolate.
      * Falling for you became an  _of course_  too.
  * You’re never fat, slim or chubby to him. Sure, it’s a thing, it’s a preference, and his hands and the touch of your skin against his has it’s differences, but you should see the way his face softens when he sees you.
    * You’re perfect to hold, against him, by him, on top of him.
    * He loves the way you ripple underneath him, supple and pliant- he doesn’t have to worry that he’s touching somewhere wrong, because you know that he loves every bit of you. He loves that you love every bit of yourself too.
      * It doesn’t stop him from telling you each time you come together, though.
  * Iwaizumi’s a simple man, and he loves you. He loves your sweetness, your kindness, your humble strides down the corridor to his classroom, your shy smile, your clumsy knock against the side of the door frame, the way you seem to hold yourself so protectively and he gets to unwrap you underneath his affection, piece by piece.
    * If you wanna hear it, you only gotta ask.




	31. Songfic: 'I found' by Amber Run with Akaashi and Terushima

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> idk if you would do something like this but would you be able to do a scenario with terushima or akaashi with their s/o based off the song 'i found' by amber run? i just thought it was a really beautiful song and your writing style is written so beautifully and idk i just thought you would be really amazing at it :)) like pure passion angst love u feel  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: This was a ghostly song that’s nothing like anything I’ve listened to, and it’s brilliant. To me, the song as a whole called out like a cry for help, for anything at all, so I took that feeling and wrote something that’s pure emotion and very little exposition. I do recommend having the song on while reading this though. Here is my explanation of the plot! I hope you don’t mind, and I hope you like where I went with it!_

This is the fourth month he’s been around her since he’s become unrecognizable to even himself in the mornings, but today, yet again, she is someone different.

They say that insanity is a perspective, and  **Terushima**  has been slowly growing acquainted with the long strolls and silent walks that madness takes through the minds of man. He and she, they’re both so infuriatingly sane, normal people, but together they’re a combustion- it all evaporates in a searing instant, and all that’s left is everything raw, everything irrational.

She’s not someone he thought he’d fall in love with. For one, he doesn’t like quiet girls. He doesn’t like girls with poker faces either, or crass girls who cuss straight at someone’s face. He likes them pretty, soft, and so wondrously feminine that it makes him feel more of a man when he wraps his arms around them. He doesn’t like dark hair either, and dull, black eyes aren’t his type. Terushima knows everything about what he wants, what he naturally gravitates to. It’s a shame that nobody warned him about being dragged forcibly onto his knees, enamoured and aching.

He sees her approach from the other side of the bridge- sometimes she’s late, sometimes she’s early, and sometimes she’s on time. There’s nothing regular about her, but he does recognize that large bag she has swung over her shoulder. In solemn silence, his breath hitches and his heartbeat slows as his eyes follow her feet, taking one step in front of the other.

Even her loosely tied hair is blowing lawlessly in the breeze, and it’s like everything is in slow motion as all the decisions he’s making races through his head. His rationale screams at him, hollers that he should know better- no, to have already known better- than to spend his time around her type of people, and what they do to him. They make him feel so utterly alive that his soul screams a battle cry, and Terushima knows that life will be tasteless without her from now on. Her crooked, brilliant grins, her sharp glares and cutting frowns brings alive everything he touches, because she’s everything he’s too afraid to try. It’s all so insane, and it’s blindingly beautiful. He has his rails that ensures his life as an easy cruise, but she drives him right off them at a ninety degree angle- nothing is straightforward anymore, not school, not volleyball, and he learns that everything he hates, he yearns for, inexplicably.

Terushima understands, now. In your own, solitary reality, you only follow the things that make sense to you. The moment you come to live and breathe madness, something fundamental in your mind shifts, and it all makes sense. Perhaps insanity is abandon, and abandon is freedom. He knows what she truly is: she’s his all his freedoms that he’s too afraid to stretch out and grasp.

She’s almost here. There are only a few more steps between his future and her ambiguous smile, and he takes those out to meet her midway. He slips into her space like it’s second nature, and she tilts her head up to look at him with those unreadable, nebula eyes. It’s impossible to see past them, there’s no soul except for the echoes she picks out for his perusal, but it’s enough. He doesn’t need complete understanding. He takes what he gets each time, and it’s the journey that counts. Even he is unsure if she knows who she is at any time.

“You look ready to go,” she murmurs, and her voice carries the weight of the wind in its tune. Terushima is more than capable of standing his ground, because this isn’t an imitation. This is his choice, he is her equal, in every single twisted way possible.

He takes her hand in his, and she doesn’t flinch when his callouses grip her porcelain skin with deliberate force. Today, she squeezes back, and it sends a heady rush of resolution through his blood.

“I’ve been ready, are you?” He teases right back.

Her laugh is more ‘yes’ than any word can hold.

This is his plea for mercy. His cry to destiny to give him this one chance, this one thing that he doesn’t want to ruin, because fuck it all, he’s burning everything and he’s going to jump. It’s reckless, blind, like a bellow into a chasm, and Terushima knows that any other love other people sing of is false. He’s going to choose her, he’s going to love her, even if it kills him. It’s always her back that he watches sway, stretching out further and further away from him into the dimming horizon- this time, he’s chosen to run with her. He’s going to match her step for step, stop when she stops, and carry her if she falls.

It’s a one way road to madness, but nothing is telling him no, and with her steady breathing right beside his, ‘no’ isn’t something he feels at all.  
  


* * *

 **  
Akaashi**  would definitely count himself as a cold man. One of those men who watch their lovers leave without a strain on their face, one of those men who can laugh when someone slices them in half with a knife. It’s the only thing he can count himself as, because he’s more or less lost the right to be anything else.

Faint are the days where he still felt the warmth of his own life in his veins, when his heart used to bleed for those he loved. When he smiled freely, joked with the intention of making others laugh, when he still felt something when he was around his friends. On good days, he’s graced with glimpses that remind him that he might still be capable of all that- but he’s far more comfortable with what he’s carved himself into now. Habits are hard to break, especially those that he hates.

Although he always liked to fashion himself as a cool man, he didn’t expect the freezing temperatures of her absence. The ghost of her passion visits his dreams more than often, and each morning he wakes up and combs his apartment for any remnants of her that might have triggered his nightmares. Of course, he finds nothing, day after day, for he’d gotten rid of everything the night he took off his wedding ring.

It was one of those breakups that lasted through legends. Everything that those terrible romance novels painted, those incompatible, passionate marriages where everything falls apart and all the exaggerated screaming comes to life about his ears. Their pages never mentioned the icy silences, the stilted arguments. He was brought up to believe that love was all heat, all warmth of two bodies against each other, but the truth is that all he remembers from it was the chill in his frostbitten heart. The only warmth that they had managed to salvage in the end was with their own friends, far, far away from each other. Even then, it was the warmth of rage, and when they opened the door each night to their shared apartment, it became a world where the only existence possible was one of nonexistence.

Today is three years to the day since he’d last seen her. Three years, and his life has turned around- in which direction he’s not sure, but it’s definitely not in hers- and he’s older, wiser, and has his affairs together tightly and shatter-proof. Akaashi Keiji is a fully fledged, jaded adult, and he wonders if she thinks about him too. He certainly does, in those quiet moments belonging to a cold morning, when he’s not quite himself yet.

It’s already five in the evening, but for a moment he thinks he must have left himself at his apartment this morning because his eyes flash to the first sign of her across the room. It’s the same posture, the same worrying twist of her wrist when she’s nervous, and he thinks that he might wake up in the next two minutes or so to find himself crumpled on his living room floor and possibly dreaming, or in tears.

No, she’s right here, even five minutes later.

The only free attendant is the one right next to her, as the gods have decided that day, so he walks up to the glass counter and slides his box across the table top.

“I’d like to sell this, please,” his voice comes out as a hoarse whisper, and he clears his throat like it’s a counter-curse to her presence. The attendant eyes him strangely, but leaves without a word and now, now it’s just him. With her.

She has their wedding ring pinched between two white-knuckled fingers, that trinket Akaashi would recognize even from his deathbed. There’s no attendant around, only her and her drawn in expression, and somewhere, something screams because he takes the first step and speaks.

It’s deja vu, it’s a recurring nightmare that leaves you empty when you finally stop dreaming it, and Akaashi is washed away on waves of her, of fate- and to him, it’s almost the same thing. She tells him everything, and there’s no surprise in her eyes when she hears his voice, empty, just like the look in her eyes. He starts from the very beginning, learning her inside out, and she reaches into him with her voice and her thoughts, and they tug out everything that he’s buried away and forgotten over the course of the endless years without her. They grow, from jewelry store to coffee, to library to dinner, to the past and to the future. It’s almost impossible, and they both blink at each other before each conversation, determined to discover the trickster behind all their coincidences.

He learns that she’s kept up by the same dreams of him, of them, and his heart breaks. It crashes and fractures into pieces unrecoverable, and all that’s left inside that hollow chest of his is a young heart. Weak and beating with the ferocity of a storm, it fights to survive each beat it makes. It’s this young organ that falls in love with her all over again by their sixth date; she’s crying silently, stoically, her shadow against the sunset overlapping his, and right before he tells her to marry him again, Akaashi allows himself one last self-depreciating laugh.

There are four more seconds until he proposes, until he begs and bares everything he is for her, and in those four seconds he prays for salvation from whatever deity is out there. He’s not going to ruin their lives twice, because if it’s anything like the first, his soul is going to bleed to death before he’ll even get to say that he’s sorry. Second chances, in this cold world that Akaashi lives in, are a miracle.

This time, this is his last. He jumps, and believes in flying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >   
> ANONYMOUS / amber run is one of my favourite artists and i was so excited to see that someone requested such a thing! i was wondering if you could explain the plot a little more for the both of akaashi and terushima? you're writing skills are so amazing  
> 
> 
> terushima’s scenario i basically created around the idea of him falling in love with the quiet, lonely girl at school. the catch is that not only is she everything he’s not, i liken her to madness because she’s incredibly wild when she wants to be, or she can be icy cold- it’s a spectrum, and she’s capable of being everything on it and this literally changes who terushima is and how he views life around him. this scene takes place when they’ve finally agreed to run away from this life together, and he’s waiting for her to arrive at their meeting place by the bridge.
> 
> akaashi’s scenario is the thoughts and story of him falling madly in love with a woman that’s both too like him and too different at the same time. they get married, but it’s a trainwreck, so they divorce. maybe it’s fate, maybe it’s just bad luck, but she’s the only one he’s ever been able to feel human around, so three years later when he finally catches sight of her in a jewelry store, struggling with the choice of selling their old wedding ring, he goes up and talks to her. they’re older, more tired, and they realize that there’s no other choice but each other so in the span of six dates, three months, they fall in love with each other again. the scenario ends with him on their last date where he’s going to ask her to marry him for the second time.


	32. Suits, volleyball, and all the headcanon in between. (Pt. 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuroo, Kenma, Daichi, Suga, Bokuto, Akaashi, Oikawa, Iwaizumi - in imaginary suits. This blew up.

**KUROO.**

  * Black on black. No tie, open two-buttoned suit jacket that hugs his waist, the top two buttons of his shirt are undone. Tailored wingtip derbies, black and matte- polished to perfection.
    * He’s actually the one who dislikes wearing suits the most (I mean, have you seen the guy, he literally looks like he throws on whatever he has lying on his bed).
    * Oh, but if you challenge him, or if the need arises-  _he’s going to be the sexiest guy in the room_ because he sure as hell isn’t going to lose at anything.
      * Hours of research and a lot of changing rooms is not going to be for nothing. If he’s going to suffer, he’s going to do some real damage before he goes (namely to your short-circuited brain and perhaps severe blood loss via nosebleed).
    * He tried the red and black combination once, until a girl actually came up to him and asked him which host club he worked at, and he’s stuck to black from then on.
    * Those undone buttons on his shirt? Collarbones. They’re so sharp that they can slice through paper, and it makes his neck slimmer and his smirk all the sexier.
    * Everything’s been absolutely tailored at least twice, and it’s so on purpose. Can you imagine those  _legs_ \- miles and miles of slim height and oh, he knows you’re staring. He’ll wink right back.
      * Now that he thinks about it, he’s never had to buy his own drink before, and thus Kuroo’s legendary alcohol tolerance was born.



**KENMA.  
**

  * Black on burgundy. Tight fitting pants and a dark crimson skinny tie to match. Three-roll-two lapel, slim fitting and it makes him look way taller than he is. Simple, polished one-piece oxford shoes, a reflective black.
    * This small fireball takes all the thunder when it comes to red- even Kuroo can’t touch this level of smooth.
      * The red highlights his frame and accentuates his blonde hair, tied up in a messy mid-height ponytail.
    * He doesn’t really care what he wears, as long as it makes him slightly taller. Burgundy doesn’t put him in the spotlight too much, and his tie narrows the line of sight even further.
      * Short, lithe, and completely stoic, he’s the type to hang back at parties with a flat stare that has all the girls whispering about.
    * This is it though, he just has one set of formal clothes (and damn does it fit him to a T) but he doesn’t mind pulling it out when people ask him to.
    * He gets a bit annoyed that there’s no room in the pockets for him to fit his 3DS in, however.
    * Don’t ask this kid to dance. He’s the type to sit by the bar and take advantage of all the free drinks and purple cups with umbrellas.



**DAICHI.**

  * Black on white, smooth and traditional, he also prefers a velvet bowtie to match the velvet lining the edges of his suit and the lapels. Pants are black, fitted but slightly loose to match the thickness of his waist. 4x1 double breasted black, with matching bit loafers.
    * Always,  _always_ , he’s the first one everyone notices because of how incredibly classic he looks. That easy smile and confident stretch of his shoulders makes him look like absolute royalty.
    * He says he much prefers his loose fitting t-shirts and gym clothes, but you couldn’t tell from the way he combs through his hair obsessively each time he’s asked to appear in black tie.
      * The stares don’t hurt either (especially not from Suga).
      * His hair however doesn’t really move much. It’s too short, but he makes sure to spray it still before he heads out.
    * He’s aware that he’s got a lot of muscle, but the double breasted makes him look solid and filled out, rather like he’s born to be in one.
    * ….This is also the only set he has. Bought out of complete necessity, he’s discovered that maybe he doesn’t mind it as much as he thinks he does.
    * (The appearance is a lie though because he’s asked on a whole lot of dances by the ladies and he’s stepped on the feet of every one of them so far.)



**SUGA.**

  * Forest green on black, with matching green pants. None of that bow-tie stuff either, it’s a (small shade lighter) dark green tie underneath that beautiful three piece suit. The waistcoat slightly lighter in colour, the outer jacket is left unbuttoned along with the long black trench coat he has on windy days. Dark brown wingtip oxfords to complete the look.
    * He’s fitted so utterly tightly that it’s a little surprising he can still move easily, but c’mon. It’s Suga. Each movement is so fluid that it makes him look like the flow of nature when he walks into a crowd.
    * His hair honestly depends on how he feels that day. Sometimes he slicks the sides of his ears back so that his face isn’t covered.
    * This is  _definitely_ not his only suit. He probably has around three more lying around in his closet, but green really brings out the brown in his eyes.
      * Silver hair makes him look like a nymph, with that mysterious smile and half-moon beams.
    * Give him any occasion to dress up, and he definitely will. Everything he puts on makes him look like some kind of God.
    * Have you seen a forest nymph dance? And not some kind of spirited ballet.  _Grinding_. 



**BOKUTO.**

  * Three piece, dark charcoal suit with velvet lapels. Jacket unbuttoned, the entire suit literally hugging every curve he has (he’s quite buff, but it makes him look like he’s chiseled out of marble), and his pants are loose fitting enough that it matches the width of his broad shoulders. White shirt, velvet bow-tie, completed with a rare chelsea boot with a cap toe. 
    * He really wanted to wear a checkered suit. Like,  _really, really_ wanted to, but it made him look like a walking fabric sample combined with his hair, so he put that dream away in the back of his closet.
    * Bokuto is a smart man, but when it comes to fashion and suits, this owl is hoot-hooting in complete confusion.
      * He didn’t even realize that he had to dress up in formal until Akaashi opened his closet and stared at him with a raised eyebrow (’ _were you planning on going in jeans, bokuto-san?’)._
      * That day everyone was busy too, so he had to be dragged to the appropriate stores by Akaashi and was left there on his own- well, not quite. The attendant literally shoved him into the changing room and threw him various pieces until it all came together.
      * Somehow.
    * It’s a little uncomfortable, because he’s not used to having things tied up to his neck, but he doesn’t mind it. It makes him feel rather spiffy, and it spikes up his confidence, especially with the bow-tie.
    * Just  _imagine_. Cocky grin, hooded eyes, golden gaze and muscle wrapped in tight charcoal.
      * At parties, he’s never left alone. Ever.



**AKAASHI.**

  * Navy. Everything is so navy, and it makes his eyes pop out like the ocean during a hurricane. Slim fitting- tight and lithe, the navy jacket with black lapels and matching pants are emphasized with a slightly dark sea-blue/green shirt that’s topped off with a black bow-tie that matches Bokuto. His shoes are regular cap-toe oxfords, a reflective black polish.
    * His jacket’s always unbuttoned. One would think that he’s a completely put-together sort of guy, but Akaashi doesn’t actually like being boxed up too much.
      * The bow-tie is a necessary sacrifice, but if you ask him, his preference is:
    * He has a series of different coloured turtlenecks to go with his suits. It’s the most comfortable if he can slip one on instead of tie anything around his neck, but black tie is black tie, so he makes the effort.
    * There’s at least two suits in his wardrobe at all times, just because of how much his mother thinks he looks amazing in them.
      * He doesn’t actually need much tailoring- his body size is so incredibly balanced that they usually have his size with a little adjustment only.
    * Have you ever wandered what poseidon would look like in modern times? Well, this is it. The curly hair that he usually leaves untamed, it curls around his face with a timeless beauty and his narrowed eyes are constantly sharp and scanning the room.
      * When he smiles, though, the whole room can still for that single moment.



**OIKAWA.**

  * Slim fitted, tailored at least three times, his lighter-to-mid charcoal, two button suit licks the shape of his body into perfection. The edges of his pockets and the lapels are a narrow velvet, paired with a black shirt underneath and a metallic dark grey tie that slims his entire frame with a center of focus. The pants are  _just so_ , wrapping around his legs without shaping them too closely, and his matching shoes are an oxford styled dress boot in black.
    * You’d think that someone like Oikawa would have an endless array of clothes that make him look good (well, he does), but there aren’t many suits. At a modest five in various different colours and combinations, the things he actually has the most of are shoes.
      * Oxfords, boots, boat, derbies- he has them all, in every hue, in every pattern.
      * The feet tie everything together, is what he always says, and you gotta hand it to him- they’re always brilliantly matched.
    * His rich auburn hair is more than often in it’s usual, perfectly coiffed style, but on occasion it’s swept backwards loosely to add a little maturity onto the soft planes of his face.
    * He does try and find any excuse possible to dress up as much as he can. Dragging his friends along with varying levels of success.
    * If you see a crowd of girls in excited voices, it’s usually because of Oikawa. He can stride into the room looking and feeling like the Prince of Wales himself, and  _good lord_  if he doesn’t look like the richest man there with that million dollar smile.



**IWAIZUMI.**

  * Double breasted is the word. A matte, dark burgundy that brings out the warmth of his skin, paired with a white shirt and a black tie. Another 4x1 (nothing old fashioned, god forbid), it hangs straight enough for his sculpted biceps to fit. There’s a slight hint of velvet near the pockets, but the dramatics are kept to a minimum. His shoes, picked out by Oikawa, are a nice sharp, black, single monk strap.
    * It’s a formidable look- nowhere near austere, but it’s difficult to pull off without a firm enough expression, and Iwaizumi sure has that down pat.
    * His hair’s a loss. There’s no way he’d agree to style it differently, and even though he’d been forced to try one time, it just refuses to stay down no matter what.
      * Personally, he thinks the spikes add character.
    * This is his only coloured suit, the other one a dull, poorly fitted black affair that he had been handed by an uncle.
    * A structured fit highlights his confident posture more than a slim fit.
      * With his chin held high and eyes that seem constantly furrowed in single-minded focus, there’s nobody he doesn’t set on fire inside with that gaze of his.
    * He really doesn’t attend these events unless they’re necessary, and somehow he’s managed to fend of Oikawa’s attempt to drag him along for several years yet.




	33. Suits, volleyball, and all the headcanon in between. (Pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terushima, Futakuchi, Ushijima, Tendou, Noya and Tanaka.

**TERUSHIMA.**

  * Three-piece, a brown so impossibly dark that under the wrong lighting it’s almost certainly black. Notch lapel and two buttoned, his jacket’s loose and open on top of a pristine white shirt. The kickers are his tie and accessories- a rich, metallic dark gold with matching watch chain and pocket square, highlighting his bronzed skin and blonde undercut. A pair of simple cap toe derbies finish the look.
    * You see, he  _knows_ , that you’d expect him to wear something flashy to match his personality and his wicked tongue piercing, but he also knows that he looks like an oasis in a desert in black and gold.
      * He does indulge his flashy side with his surprisingly smart-casual array of clothes- another formal favourite of his is a black and white checkered jacket on top of a simple black turtleneck with black pants and shoes.
    * He’s a naturally slim person, but his suits are structured to give him the confidence to match his smirk. Pants slim fitted to shape around his sleek calves, it makes him look miles tall.
      * His hair, when he actually tries, is slicked back firmer than usual, and there are absolutely no wisps of hair blocking the sinful expression he shoots at you.
    * Playing with his cuffs when he’s bored just doesn’t kick it for him. He prefers to rest his weight on one leg and slide the tips of his fingers into his pant pockets cockily.
      * He’s always the first one to get asked to dance, with his rough undercut and slick outfit, and  _boy_ are they all surprised because this man, despite looking like a million dollars, dances like he’s earning his keep dollar by dollar.
        * Give him a pole.  _Give him a fucking pole,_ and you’ll be going home a few items of clothing short tonight.



**FUTAKUCHI.**

  * A deep metallic blue two-buttoned jacket and matching slim-fit pants. Hugging his shoulders and waist that gives him a streamline appeal, it’s matched with a light blue/almost white shirt with a gradient, metallic charcoal tie. A pair of one piece oxfords with a slight split toe completes this.
    * This metallic combo makes him look effortlessly slim, and flashy enough that it brings out his wide, closed-eyed smile. Just the right balance of guy-next-door with I’m-going-to-snatch-your-attention.
      * Sure, he could have gone with something that makes him look older, but honestly, this is his selling point. His youth  _gravitates_.
    * His usual split-side hairstyle is turned into something completely different- a messy set of bangs framing his oval face and mousse whipping his hair into soft, organized chaos.
      * It makes him look a year or two older, and at least a few degrees more chill. He’s the guy you bring home and even your parents fall in love with his easy going grin.
        * It’s not  _entirely_ a lie, but all that softness goes away the moment he takes the suit off, and it’s all rough play from there on.
    * Strangely enough, for someone who actually knows his way around the bespoke section quite well, he’s only got two sets of formal clothing. He likes looking a hundred, but events and parties aren’t really his thing.
      * (It’s a bit weird to wear suits at a goukon, he thinks.)
    * Undoubtedly, though, when he really tries, he’s got the wickedest sense of fashion out of them all.



**NISHINOYA.**

  * Jet black, velvet suit. Jacket and pants both incredibly well fitted against his small figure, it prevents the potential bulkiness that the texture of velvet brings, making him look at least half a foot taller than he actually is. Underneath is a gently striped, grey shirt and a regular black tie with a slight reflective tinge to balance out the matte. Finished with a medium heel, reflective black, double monk strap shoes.
    * The thing about Noya is that he has absolutely no chill. Always original, always true to himself- this goes one step beyond. He doesn’t just settle for something that represents his character, he chooses something exceptional  _because_  that’s what he does.
      * Nobody expects velvet, especially not on someone his height, but one look at him and you know there’s nobody else in the room with enough confidence to pull this level of sophistication off.
    * The taper and the single, thin jacket vent at the back brings him to godly levels of ease and slimness. Pushing his muscled corners and edges into one smooth shape, the slim cut of this entire piece crystallizes the aura around him.
    * You’re also in luck, because his hair, usually at defiant peaks, is let down loose. There’s barely any product in his hair, and it’s left soft and framing his face however it wants to.
      * It settles for curling a little around his ears but otherwise straight, and it cuts a streamline picture of him.
    * Surprisingly, he doesn’t dance much. He does tap his heel to the beat when he feels particularly in the mood, but he spends most of his time catching up with his friends and occasionally, giving his fangirls a cocky grin.



**TANAKA.**

  * A soft, smooth charcoal/black jacket and matching pants, they’re both structured and giving him and edge to his build, which makes him slightly larger. The jacket is lined with a medium grey that peeks out the inner edge of his lapels, and the matching waistcoat is a thin-striped black and grey with a white shirt underneath. A slightly silver tie highlights the set, and a pair of traditional cap toe derbies in black completes this.
    * When he’s not busy pretending to be his own girlfriend, this man is a class act. Slightly flashier than Daichi’s traditional, this look elevates his gentle nature to new heights.
      * He’s by no means more inclined to use his inside voice with a suit on, but all people get sucked in when he smiles, and he honestly looks like a saint.
    * Why a three-piece? He actually has no idea, because Tanaka has never checked out fashion in his life. However, Saeko had gone shopping with him, and because this is probably the one and only set of formal clothes he’ll ever have, they splurged big time on a tailored set.
      * The funny thing is that this guy doesn’t even really know what effect he has on people after wearing this stuff. Everybody gets shocked stiff seeing him walk into the room with such calm, and he just goes ‘what???’
    * At least he doesn’t have to style his hair.
    * This guy is literally the opposite of Noya when it comes to social parties. He’s utterly, entirely himself and he’s the first one on the dance floor (regardless of whether or not someone asks him) and the last one off, bobbing to the beat and fist pumping all night.
      * He tried jumping onto the DJ stage once to take over, and that did not go well when he refused to stop after the third song.



* * *

_Bonus!_

* * *

**USHIJIMA.**

  * White, two-button jacket on white shirt. Pristine black slacks loose enough to give him the balance he needs for his upper body but tight enough to hug him well are part three of this timeless tuxedo look. With only the first button done up and a full black bow-tie, a pair of cap toe chelsea boots finish the look.
    * Not a particularly fashion-adventurous man, he sticks to what he knows, and boy does this suit him well. Firm and eye-catching, the white gives him the illusion of bulk (which he’s got plenty of from exercise), and put together with his formidable height, he looks like a towering noble with his stern expression.
      * He’s actually the only one in the room to try out this timeless look, and he’s alike a man fresh from an evening of fine dining and stepping into a casino.
    * His hair, with assistance, is slicked back tightly against his scalp, with the exception of a few licks of hair that escape and graze his eyebrows, giving him a slightly less austere feel.
    * This also, is his only set of formal clothes, as he usually prefers to wear things that are practical for volleyball or jogging.
      * This suit was pretty much a team effort on Shiratorizawa’s part because of how little he cared about finding something that fitted him.
    * He paints a more foreboding image when he takes large, striding steps rather than multiple, smaller ones across the room, and there’s a soft gust of wind when he passes.
    * There aren’t many people who ask him to dance, so he situates a small drink in his hand and drifts around greeting old friends.
      * It’s not that nobody’s interested in him, but he’s really not aware that he looks so impossibly untouchable with that impenetrable aura. All the girls just huddle and watch him from afar.



**TENDOU.**

  * He’s sporting a single-button, black and purple geometric squared jacket. The solid black lapel is perched low, matching the strips of black around the cuff of the jacket. Paired with slim black slacks and a regular white shirt underneath, he’s at least opted for a slim fitting bow-tie that complements the flat geometric pattern. Plain toe chelsea boots round up the suit.
    * You gotta hand it to him, he controlled his urge to actually blind everyone out of amusement and chose something that flattered his body within the realms of reason.
      * He was  _thiiis_  close to picking something either bright green, or bright purple. Then someone pointed out to him that looking like the Joker at a party would not be a good thing.
    * This combination makes him look extremely well put together, tall and endlessly confident to pull off such a proud print with a rare colour.
      * Although slim fitting, it’s not the most shapely hue, but the dips of his waist creates enough shadows that it slims his waist down so that he’s an impressive slight hourglass streamline.
    * His long, spiked hair is left down, and most certainly not slicked back. It lies softly against his neck, with the longer sections to either side of his head tied up in a small pony-tail/bun at the back of his head.
      * _Nobody_  has ever seen this hair on him before. Nobody expected to either, so it was a lot of dropped jaws.
    * As crazy as he can be sometimes, he’s remarkably calm and well behaved being surrounded by a lot of people, and although he prefers not to dance, he does spend most of the evening entertaining as many small chit-chats with the ladies that approach him.




	34. Suits, volleyball, and all the headcanon in between. (Pt. 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akiteru, Kei, Kageyama and Hinata.

**AKITERU.**

  * Light grey, almost silver suit in silk. Single breasted, and two buttoned- the jacket is accompanied with a dark pocket square and matched with a pair of slim fit, cuffed pants of the same hue. This look is supported by a grey with black lines, checkered shirt, and a matching silk grey tie. Shoes of choice are a pair of white moccasins with black lining.
    * Akiteru has the thinnest proportions out of them all, so the pale colour gives him a little width and bulk, while slim tailoring, especially around the waist and thighs, maintain a sleek silhouette from any angle.
    * This man is possibly one of the laziest dressers out there, with his high school bomber jacket and pants he’s picked up from random stores when his friends drag him shopping, but he cleans up incredibly well.
      * Incredibly fast too, because his hair is not changed much, only slicked backwards slightly around the sides of his face to frame it and not cover it.
      * This gives him a polished look, not too slick, but elegant, with his golden eyes and easy smile that picks up the formality of his outfit into breezy elegance.
    * He does look like a man back from some posh polo club, as many people keep on pointing out.
      * Maybe a golfer, too, and this really doesn’t help because a  _lot_  of girls start coming up to him during the party and offer him drinks and talk about what kind of car he drives (it’s a little awkward to have to tell them it’s just a normal Nissan that used to belong to the family).
    * Dancing is his guilty pleasure. He’s actually rather terrible at it, with his limbs flailing a little when the music picks up the pace, but nobody can tell because he looks like an absolute vision in the dim lighting.
      * (Just don’t dance  _with_  him.)



**KEI.**

  * His suit of choice is a light, almost silvery lilac. Slightly on the metallic side with matching, cuffed pants, the matching jacket is a two-buttoned affair, peak lapeled, and a dark (slightly floral) purple pocket square. The shirt underneath is a checkered mix of lilac, black and white, and his tie is a deep violet tie. Deep brown, leather moccasins complete the look.
    * Maybe it’s just something about the Tsukishima brothers, but they don’t take the easy road when it comes to clothing. This colour choice is obviously not an easy one to pull off, but Kei makes sure he does it. 
      * Have you seen the man? He’s deceptively subtle about his fashion choices, but everything he puts on shows exactly the type of image he wants to have for himself, from his usual jumper to his headphones.
    * His glasses are his usual roundish square ones, and they rest thickly in contrast to his loose, blonde hair and frames his otherwise oval face.
      * His hair is mostly left untouched. With only a few fingerfuls of sculpting mousse, it fixes his hair in a bed-head fashion but coiffed enough that it’s an obvious effort. Obviously effortless, in fact.
    * It’s because he’s so tall- all legs- that his jacket is tailored to fit inwards on his waist, to give it the necessary hourglass dimension so that he’s not just a straight pillar. His pants are slightly looser than his jacket fit, and they’re cuffed so that the end hangs a centimeter or so short from his ankles, making him seem even slimmer.
    * This kid definitely has more than one suit in his closet. In fact, it had taken him quite some time cycling between all the different colours and styles before he chose this suitably flashy one to make a statement without him actually having to say anything.
    * Not many girls actually approach him through the night, although he’s had to abruptly turn down two or three offers to dance. All the ladies choose to stay in a corner and take pictures of this ridiculously fashionable man instead while his friends shoot him amused glances and snicker.
      * It was a much needed open bar that night.



**KAGEYAMA.**

  * Dark grey/almost black pinstripe three piece, three-buttoned and with a notch lapel. The waistcoat is a matching style and colour, and same goes with his pants that hand just above his black lace-up oxfords so that they don’t pool. Underneath is a stark white shirt with a black and silver diagonally striped tie and a dark silver pocket square.
    * A little puzzled at first at the fact that his usual hand-me-down suit jacket with dark trousers wasn’t the right attire, he had gone the opposite direction and went all out on his shopping trip.
      * It’s definitely tailored, but Kageyama definitely didn’t realize how badly it needed to be tailored to fit his specific set of calf muscles and narrow shoulders.
        * I mean, really. He has a good sense of fashion, but only when it comes to appropriate athletic attire and the occasional scarf.
    * Although pinstripe is definitely not something you usually find at parties, he pulls it off with surprisingly dignity. Kageyama’s posture has always been and probably will forever be faultless, so when he steps and makes a move, it looks like he’s born to be wearing something so professional, maybe even slightly austere.
    * It’s not a overly stiff suit- it makes him tread the line between professional, and regular black tie.
    * His hair is actually left the way it is, without any product. If he had slicked it back or restricted it in any way, it would have made the outfit too severe. In this case, with his usual soft bangs and sideburns, it simply makes him look incredibly intelligent and elegant. 
    * He does try to dance when he’s asked to, and he tries to drink when he’s handed one too.
      * The drink, he somehow manages to finish with an ugly expression on his face (it’s a far cry from gatorade and lunchtime milk), but it gives him enough burn in his chest that pushes him the extra mile to be social that night.
      * Dancing, he’s oddly good at. There’s no pattern in his moves, no coherence, but when he starts to sway to the music, his movements are smooth and regulated, and he ends up being the one who the girls dance with the most all night.



**HINATA.**

  * A medium grey, checkered suit with thin lines and matching pants. This is a three piece, and the waistcoat also matches the rest of the colour and pattern. An opened, three buttoned jacket, this is lined by a white shirt and a lilac purple, skinny tie. The cutting is extremely slimming, and it hugs his figure and doesn’t let go. Dark brown, almost black chelsea boots finish the outfit.
    * He actually chose this suit himself, for no reason other than he passed someone wearing that on the street one day, and he thought they looked wonderful. Knowing that he had a formal event coming up, he had popped into the next store he found and ordered almost the exact same look.
      * He does have another suit at home, but it’s a regular black (at least it’s his, and not a used suit), which doesn’t hold his attention for very long.
      * It’s a good thing, because black would indeed make his hair pop, but also his frame much smaller and thinner than it already is. The grey and purple allow the highlight to be Hinata’s bright orange hair, but at the same time puts balance to the rest of his body.
    * Usually, dark colours do slim, but Hinata this time needs more bulk to appear taller and slimmer, rather than thin. This fleshes him out, and also gives him the height he needs (insoles help too).
    * His hair isn’t his usual fare. Although it’s still relaxed and not heavily styled, it’s washed and blow-dried into soft waves that fall backwards rather than upwards in spikes. This gives him a softer look, which is a much needed reprieve from his intense stare, and also matches the soft colours of his suit.
    * This kid has downed possibly all the drinks that his friends have handed him within the first thirty minutes of the gathering (all cocktails), and he’s the first to jump about on the dance floor asking for more energetic songs.
      * Very few girls approach him too, not for trying, but because he actually doesn’t notice they’re trying to talk to him when he’s too occupied dancing to absolutely whatever is playing.
      * Nobody needs to ask him to dance, he’s just there, really happily by himself and dragging his friends into dance battles half the time.




	35. Suits, volleyball, and all the headcanon in between. (Pt. 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ladies of Karasuno.

**KIYOKO.** _[Elie Saab]_

  * Long, plum velvet that falls to slightly below her ankles. The dress is a long, thigh high split dress with a staggering deep-v neckline that resembles two pieces of fabric falling forwards and being belted around her slim waist with an elegant twist of the cloth. Splits both below and above, this dress is reminiscent of a toga-style, bare backed and embellished with large crystal brooches the shape of bird feathers and other sequins and diamonds clustered around her left shoulder and her right hip. A pair of bare, strappy metallic sandals of around four inches complete her look.
    * This look is all Kiyoko. Her style, her choice and her favourite colour, this dress, although baring a lot, covers without fear any part that isn’t commonly seen. It glides around her like waves due to the reflectiveness of dark velvet, and the cutting wraps around her making her as slim and mysterious as willow.
      * By far, this isn’t the only thing she thought of wearing. Because of her milky skin and slim figure, she can almost wear anything at all and bring it to its potential.
      * However, for an evening affair and among such close friends, she chose fashion and elegance over making a statement or being too eye-catching. Perfect for her personality.
    * Her black hair is left in waves behind her back. Slightly curled and not too long, they cascade past her shoulders and swirl around the base of her neck, adding to her striking profile.
      * Truth be told, she rather dislikes having her hair up. With her jet black hair and stern expression, people usually assume that she’d wear something austere, but she much prefers to let loose.
      * There is minimal product in her hair, except for the heat curling and a setting spray. It looks far too shiny for anything else to tamper with the smoothness of her hair tonight.
    * She doesn’t touch the dance floor at all, despite being asked multiple times by multiple men, she declines them all politely. Preferring to spend time with her team and catch up with other managers that she’s become friends with, she nurses a single martini for the whole evening and enjoys the relatively relaxing mood of the jazz band.



**SAEKO.** _[Balmain]_

  * One piece of cloth becoming the whole dress, this gown is a long reaching cloak that touches the floor and only held together with several hidden buttons around the waist and covered with an elegant knot. This dress is a bright magenta, a touch on the darker side, and the sleeves flare out like a kimono to mid-lower arm. The bottom being naturally wide open up till thigh level, the front also dips down almost to waist level with lapels much wider than, but similar to, a suit. The lapels are connected above to soft, dark brown leather shoulder pads that are slim and embroidered into the natural fabric itself. The accompanying shoes are a strappy stiletto with a crimson base, orange toe, and a turquoise ankle strap.
    * A vision of feminine empowerment, this is a statement piece through and through. The wide contrast of colours across her feet and the large splash of red that is dark enough to be elegant, yet bright enough to spark gossip, this is a dress best worn with her hands on her hips and a proud expression.
      * No other accessories accompany this look, except for Saeko’s confident smirk and cheerful grin that brightens up the shock-factor of her outfit.
        * It fits her completely, from her personality to her fashion forward choices (never shying from the risque), she blossoms underneath everyone’s slack-jawed stare of admiration.
    * Her hair colour is the finishing touch to her look. Bright, blonde and short, not only does this elevate a simple piece of fabric from ‘simple’ to ‘modern’, it shortens the line of sight so people focus on her torso and legs, rather than the stretch of her neck.
      * Like Kiyoko, there is little adjustment to her hair. No products whatsoever other than a shower and a blow-dry to make it stick straight and framing her face with a natural ease.
    * Honestly, she’s never worn something like this before in her life. Usually she goes for the edgy, yet practical look with a mix and match of clothing items, but once she caught sight of this in a store, there was no going back.
    * She’s also definitely going to be drunk by the end of the party. Going through every drink that all the men flocking around her hands her, she’s a good sport to give everyone a quick chat and dance, and Ryu has to drag her home by the end- not because she’s too drunk to walk, but because her feet hurt too much.



**YACHI.**   _[Valentino]_

  * In a modern twist of a twenties look, this creamy dress is slim and straight, although not figure hugging, this dress leaves very little room for error. Falling into a very deep v-neck, almost down to her abdomen, this sleeveless dress falls straight down with silver and gold embroidery in petal-shapes, more frequently above the waist and tapering down into looser knit patterns lower down. Highlighted with small crystals, the dress falls past her feet, and is covered with a soft, transparent fabric that puffs up around her like a second dress, like a wedding veil over her body. Beginning from her neck, this fabric circles her wrists like balloon sleeves and drapes downwards like a light curtain. This look is completed with nude strappy stilettos with a wooden platform.
    * Yachi was never going to go for anything excessively bright, and this dress has enough lightness yet softness that doesn’t outshine her. A mixture of cream and light nude, it gives her an impression of effortless beauty that highlights her own face and figure rather than a physical representation of her personality.
      * Luckily, this does fit her nature, and with each movement the shimmering waves of her dress makes her look all the more otherworldly.
        * It also makes her far taller than she actually is, but nobody needs to know that.
    * Her hair is curled into a gentle, loose bun behind her hair, with wisps and the sides falling in front in light curls that frame her face. It doesn’t make it slimmer, but it makes it fuller and richer, and a dress like this doesn’t deserve to be covered by long hair, no matter how blonde.
      * It’s deceptively soft, actually. She’d never admit to how much hairspray and how much help she needed to make it stay, and by the time she’s done, she’s sweated so much that she had to do her makeup all over again.
    * This outfit in fact, does more than just match her- it brings her to life. This is nothing like what she would wear normally (this is her only formal dress, even though her mother had been encouraging her to keep buying more), because she doesn’t believe that she’d match up to anything fancy, but this gives her a surprising amount of courage.
      * This makes her grown up, she feels comfortable in her skin for once, and she’s not afraid to show off the way she walks or the way her head tilts, in contrast to her usual anxiousness. This is the first time she feels utterly powerful and in control of herself, despite the gentle picture she paints.
    * She’s definitely asked on endless amounts of dances (all which they discover she’s actually pretty terrible at, but she smiles so sheepishly that one can’t help but forgive her), and she has to be physically rescued by Hinata from all the guys asking for some of her time.



**NATSU.** _[Hiromi Asai]_

  * This outfit is indeed tailored for her vibrant hair. Wearing a kimono, this is made of dark navy fabric in one single swath, detailed embroidery of browns, pale lilacs, gold and white carefully placed on her left shoulder and tangling around the right folds of her kimono past her waist. There is a splattering of lighter decoration throughout the dress, and in the slight left, past her knee, there is a large embroidery of a white chrysanthemum among brown leaves and stems. A bold stripe of dark green cuts through the solid navy down the middle-right of the dress. The kimono is held together with a golden obi over a golden fabric base, orange, yellow and more gold swipes of a brush illustrate the obi and bring to life the brightness of the dress.
    * Nobody can call Natsu a lady-like or even calm girl, but there is an intensity in her eyes that burns just like her brother. Slightly less round yet more concentrated, Natsu’s hair burns like a bonfire at midnight against the dark of her kimono.
      * The point of navy is to make sure her best physical aspects pop out. If it were any other colour, green, for example, to match her down to earth nature, it would eclipse her hair and skin and instead place the focus on the dress. This dress serves only as a platform to show off her milky skin and ruthless hair.
    * She’s by no means a conservative person, but there is something that ties her to tradition, to elegance only found in traditional clothing, and a kimono traps and slims her figure into a sleek streamline, ending finally with a pair of wooden getas.
      * It doesn’t trap her spirit, oh no. Instead of her energy flowing sideways and outwards in any direction at all, this piece focuses her tension and bubbling energy into her posture and the way her face animates in the evening light. Especially at a party and not a festival, this dark toned kimono gives her enough gravitas to hold her own among western evening dresses.
    * Her hair is untouched. Decorum does state that hair should be tied up in a neat bun with a hair pin when it comes to kimonos, but her orange hair is wild, curling chaotically around the licks of her throat, the arch of her cheekbones and brushing the back of her shoulders like liquid fire.
      * She looks like a spirit of night, wrathful and glorious in her rage, but when she smiles, all falls away and everyone can only stare at the brightness that exudes from an evening piece.




	36. Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Akaashi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> scenario with akaashi and fem s/o where akaashi is an assassin/spy thingo and he was on a mission to kill his s/o and now they're just standing in front of one another and akaashi is holding the gun but hejust cant shoto and (i'm so sorry this is a cliche but please feel fee to make it as original as possible! )  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: My brain went on a wild ride with this one! I initially misread that both characters would be assassins, then I wanted to make it all badass, then my brain went ‘nope’ and… well, you’ll see. This was incredibly fun to write, thank you for requesting this. :) I hope you enjoy it!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > ANONYMOUS / i love akaashi keiji. plain and simple. i have a question though. in the spy au, is he hired to kill his wife? or did his bosses tell him to? did his wife only have to shoot him bc of self defense or? im so sorry i absolutely love your scenario but i had a few questions. please by any means continue to write bc i am now addicted to your blog
> 
> ah, yeah, that’s a bad habit of mine, i’m afraid. i tend to write as little exposition as possible and when i do provide context it’s in the form of extremely subtle hints that actually might not even be hints. ;_; but in the spy au, i mostly went along with the mr. and mrs. smith route, where their agencies sent them on respective missions to take out each other (i mean, it’s a good business move, and sadistic enough for it to be entertaining.) they both figured it out early, but they’ve been avoiding it, pretending nothing’s wrong, and this is their climax. and thank you for your kind words! :)

The house is empty when he returns. Nothing is out of the ordinary; the porch lights are on, the garage doors slide up smoothly when he presses the remote button. The low grinding of the tires against gravel is a noise he hears every night when he parks his Mercedes next to her Porsche.

It’s 6.55, five minutes until dinner’s ready. Akaashi is a naturally quiet man, and he slides his key and unlocks the front door very quietly, as he usually does. The hinges make no noise, because he’d oiled them a week ago, and he slips off his shoes by the glass shoe-rack. It’s only a small thing, as neither of them like impulse spending, and he counts silently in his head. Yes, they’re all there. She’s probably in her slippers then, padding around the polished wooden floor on muted feet.

He’s not the type to shout, especially in such a large house with only the two of them, so his entrance past the foyer and into the living room is unannounced.

She’s not there, and the curtains are drawn. Akaashi really should be getting on, but he takes a moment to run his fingers over the fine embroidery of their antique couch. It had belonged to his grandmother, and they had without hesitation, both decided to place it where they would see it the most.

 

* * *

 

_“What do you think about a dog?”_

_“Depends on whose dog it is.”_

_“…Why do you know everything I’m going to say?”_

_“This is an expensive couch, let’s not ruin it with teething, infant beasts yet, how about it?”_

_“Well at least I know what you feel now about having children.”_

_“My feelings on children are entirely different.”_

_“Really?”_

_“Yes. They shit everywhere too.”_

_“Keiji!”_

 

* * *

He peeks his head around the corner into the kitchen, and she’s not there either. It’s out of the ordinary, because both of them are quite tidy individuals, and the lights and oven have been left on. Akaashi reaches out to bring up a knife dirtied with the slight orange colour of chopped carrots. It’s all there, neatly sorted into bowls of prepared vegetables on the counter. The salt and pepper are out too, ready to go on the steak that’s still sitting on the chopping board.

Before he walks out of the kitchen, he takes a minute or two to put the condiments back into the shelf where they belong.

Seeing dinner almost complete makes him a little hungry, and it gives the uncomfortable churning in his stomach an edge- a nagging feeling that tugs at his sides. She always tells him off softly for that too, when he stays out too late or overworks himself at the office until he’s back at three in the morning looking completely famished. He remembers her late night snacks for him like it was yesterday, but he’s stopped coming home so late for two years. He misses them a little, maybe not the worried expression on her face, but the way she laces their fingers together and bumps her hip against his in a gentle admonishment.

It’s supposed to be his turn to cook tomorrow evening, if she’s doing it tonight. The only logical conclusion would be to make a stew, since she’s making something seared tonight. A warm smile touches his lips, unbidden, and when Akaashi pictures the scene of the two of them wrapped up next to each other on the sofa eating off fancy plates and watching bad soap operas, he forgets to be unhappy for a minute.

He gives the guest rooms downstairs a quick glance over, and she’s not there either.

 

* * *

_“Mmmm, a boyfriend who cooks? Does this mean I’m set for life?”_

_“I’ll cook if you buy the groceries.”_

_“Sure, let’s leave the most tedious part for the lady.”_

_“Lady? I don’t see a lady here.”_

_“Oh, I see how it is. I guess it won’t matter if I do this-”_

_“-Stop! STOP! At least roll down the curtains, jesus christ!”_

_“I_ so _am a lady.”_

 

* * *

 

Akaashi is very proud of his stairs. He’s always been thankful that he chose to invest in good craftsmanship and good wood, and since they bought the house six years ago, he hasn’t heard a single creak from them at all. It’s all the better for him, because he knows that he’s used to stealth. He’s used to pretending that he’s not where he really is, and with each silent step he remembers what he’s supposed to do.

For him, silence has always been the loudest noise for him, and the way the house seems to be resonating with it, Akaashi has a lot of moments to think. One of the things that comes to mind is how she was happy to hear that he liked things quiet too, and now, he understands, that the soundless stairs were probably a good thing for her too.

The banisters reflect only the warm, dim light from downstairs’ corridor and his own shadow. He makes it to the top before flicking up the switch that lights up their second floor. Akaashi glances around without moving his head, only his eyes flickering here and there, and it doesn’t seem like there’s anyone upstairs either.

He heads to the salon first, and when the only sign of life he sees is their shared pot of white tulips, he can’t help but take a seat next to them. Although pale yellow is his favourite colour, he thinks that these flowers are the most beautiful he’s ever seen.

-

_“Happy Tuesday! I have a present for you.”_

_“But Tuesdays are my worst days.”_

_“All the more reason!”_

_“You got me a scarf? In the middle of summer?”_

_“I saw it in a display today and, well, I kinda thought it would make your hair look beautiful.”_

_“…I have a present for you too.”_

_“A scarf??”_

_“No, tulips.”_

_“Did you choose to raise plants instead because they don’t shit and bite your furniture?”_

_“Correct.”_

-

His fingers fall away from their supple petals in a lonely caress, and he pushes himself upright. He’ll come back and water them later, he decides. The piano seems to play itself a mournful tune of farewell as he slips out and closes the door behind him.

There are a lot of windows in their house, he realizes. Purchasing it, they had been more focused on the layout and the spread of space, and even at night they usually turn the lights on in a trail behind them. Rarely have either of them needed to navigate the house in darkness, and now that he’s chosen to do so, Akaashi finally notices the way the half-moon lays down checkered patterns on the floor like a mat. Window after window, it marks his progress down the hallway.

Usually, there’s music coming from at least somewhere. Wherever she decides to nest, really, and if Akaashi ever loses her or if she doesn’t respond to his gentle call of her name, he only needs to follow the source of the music until she pops up sooner or later. It’s too quiet for his liking tonight, so when he reaches their shared room, he slides their built in speaker system on.

It plays her favourite song, Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 11, at a medium to low volume, and Akaashi feels a chill run down his arms. As much as she loves this, she seldom listens to it. Akaashi is the classical music lover out of the two of them, and this was the song he performed for her with a modest orchestra the night he proposed. She, however, thoroughly enjoys pop music and dramatic electronic tunes, and it’s despite all that she’s managed to fall in love with everything that Akaashi loves to listen to, too.

The melody feels like a love letter, a letter of apology, a message, a serenade. She’s not even here, not in the house like Akaashi had originally thought, but he falls in love with her a little more with each passing arpeggio.

Lithe fingers flip open the envelope on the nightstand, revealing an actual note on a post-it note. The laugh that this brings him aches from his head to his heart. He puts it back where he had found it after reading over the message, and makes his way downstairs again, a little faster than before. Swiping his abandoned jacket from the back of the couch, he leaves the house.

 

* * *

 

_“I’ve been thinking of putting you in my will.”_

_“That’s sudden. We’re not married or anything. Do you have a terminal disease you’re not telling me about?”_

_“It’s just good to be careful. You never know what’s going to happen.”_

_“You’re… right, but… I don’t really want to think about anything happening to either of us yet. Not when we haven’t tried so many things together.”_

_“Alright. I won’t mention it again until you’re ready.”_

_“Thank you, Keiji.”_

_“Mhmm.”_

 

* * *

 

The hotel lobby is so familiar to him that the busboys and the concierge all shoot him welcoming, yet knowing looks the moment he steps in. Akaashi supposes that he should feel a little abashed that he’s come here so often for dinner with his wife that everyone recognizes him, but nothing shows on his alabaster skin. He nods at them, a polite greeting that doesn’t disturb their work, and makes his way to the auditorium. It’s an odd combination, a hotel and an auditorium, but it’s the reason why he likes this place the best of all.

When he slips in from one of the side doors, he’s greeted with a solid flood of atmospheric lights, and a single spotlight that seems to be shining at the stage. She’s right there, waiting for him, her slim dress hugging her down to her ankles as they dangle off the edge of the platform. Graceful, yet obstinate, as always, and he clears his throat to let himself be known.

Her smile is so sad that it inspires a soft composition in his head. Akaashi makes his way closer to her and stops when he’s right in front of the dip that is the orchestra pit. Their eyes are locked onto each other, into each other, and he speaks first.

“Would you like me to play something for you?” His voice is terribly quiet, but it sounds like a cry in the silence and acoustics of the hall. “Chopin, perhaps?”

“Only if you’re planning on proposing again,” she laughs softly, bordering on a giggle and a chuckle. He watches wordlessly as her eyes wrinkle a little at the edges, her lips turn up at the sides and her fingers curl around the edge of the stage a little tighter. She’s not hiding a single thing from him, and it makes his breath heavy.

“Not tonight,” he murmurs.

A weighted silence hovers above them, and although they’ve spent more than half the time in peace, in each other’s arms, not needing to say a word, this leaves an uncomfortable tingle in their limbs. Stretched, sluggish, yet ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Her eyes finally flicker away from his own deep-sea ones, and they rest longingly on his shoulders and his hands. “Did you bring everything you need with you?”

Akaashi tenses his fingers. “Yes,” he replies, this time more solidly, “you left the bathtub untouched.”

Her smile is kind, and he returns one of his own. “I had to leave you with something, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Thank you.”

She had always been the soft-hearted one, more so than he. Even her fingers look reluctant as they slide out a Desert Eagle .50 from behind her, wrapping around the grip with the same amount of delicacy she would cup his cheek with, or run her fingers over his lips with.

Akaashi can’t help but raise an impassive eyebrow, and draws his own Walther PPK/S .380 from its position by his belt. She doesn’t make a move yet, and he flushes a little in appreciation as he takes advantage of their stillness to double check his suppressor.

“I knew you’d be a suppressor kind of person,” she teases. Akaashi doesn’t look up, but continues to run his fingers carefully over any gaps he might have missed.

“And I didn’t think you’d really prefer power over speed, yet here we are.”

She shrugs, and this time he does catch it. He raises his head to meet her eyes again, and their grips on their guns grow firmer. “I don’t, not for actual work. A girl can have her guilty pleasures, after all.”

“Chopin?” He can’t help but grin a little, and she laughs again. Oh, how he loves that sound, more than music itself.

“Chopin,” she agrees, with a lingering smile, “and you.”

He lifts the gun to point it at the space between her eyes. She does the same, without hesitation.

“You were mine too,” he admits.

“Were?”

Akaashi gazes at her rather than stares, and his heart feels so incredibly full that it beats only pain that one feels when absolutely, irrevocably in love. “Are. You still are,” he corrects. It’s the most truthful thing he’s said all evening, perhaps all year, and the confession is worth three times its weight in gold when a rich, red flush spreads over her cheeks and her lips widen with happiness.

What a sight they must both make! She is beautiful- she is always beautiful, to him, even in tea-stained shirts and ripped pajama pants- in the black, full length dress that he had once commented on as his favourite. He, in his work clothes: a simple, black tuxedo with velvet highlights, and he knows it makes him look every inch a mysterious stranger. It was necessary for this afternoon’s job, you see. The job he took on because he had been taking too long on the current one he’s on. The one he put off for weeks.

He’s peering at her skin from behind his rear sight, down the barrel, and it’s a shame she doesn’t appear on stage more often because the gentle lights that beam up at her that makes her look a vision to him. He’s all coiled and tense, yet she’s still gripping her pistol loosely, swinging her legs like she always does when she’s nervous, and Akaashi has never wanted to pull her to him more in his life. He wants to murmur into her soft hair that she’ll be alright, that it’ll be better tomorrow, and that he’ll bring her a warm cup of tea once she’s tucked in bed.

She needs only to pull that trigger at him, for her to become the adult she’s always loathed being. Muscle memory will snap into place no matter how carelessly she does it, and without a doubt Akaashi believes that her bullet will hit its mark.

Maybe if she shoots at his heart instead of his head, it’ll distract him from that unshakeable ache in his chest for a while.

Akaashi Keiji is excellent at his job. He is one of the best in his agency, and he has never failed a mission before.

“Shoot me,” he looks her in the eye and tells her.

“I’m trying,” comes her strangled reply, forcibly light with stress and Akaashi lowers his gun. In fact, he lets it dangle off his fingers and drop of its own volition, onto the plush carpeted floor. It hits the ground with a muffled thud, and he lets his hands hang loosely at his sides.

“I love you,” he bleeds his heart from his lips, and all the pressure inside fades with each word he exhales, “I can’t shoot you. I wouldn’t be able to live afterwards.”

Her expression is pained, and her hands tremble when the tears start to roll down her cheeks in big, fat beads. It makes him feel a little better, because he’s adept enough at reading her expressions to know that she’s been holding those in for days now. Those stolen days built on stolen moments- taking as many normal, happy moments with them as they can.

“Keiji,” she whispers his name, “you’re a dead man if you don’t.”

“I’m a dead man if I do,” he replies stubbornly. His face betrays nothing, but his eyebrows are set in firm resolution, and his fingers wrapped into fists. He’s done nothing yet except for stand and stare, but he’s already exhausted and worn down to the bone. He can feel the beads of sweat form along his hairline but he doesn’t dare to break their tension. “If you want to shoot me, then please.”

“I don’t  _want_  to!” She grumbles indignantly. “Don’t put it like that. You always do that.”

He rocks backwards a little on his heels and smiles. “I do, I’m sorry.”

She lets out a heavy sigh, one that’s more impatient than solemn, and something in Akaashi’s chest leaps. He can’t quite believe his eyes, believe his life when he sees her toss her own gun to the side in a snap of her arm.

“Who’s going to play me Chopin in the middle of the night if I shoot you?”

“They did invent CDs.”

“Keiji, nobody uses CDs anymore.”

“Pirating is a crime, you know. You might get caught.”

“Funnily enough, I’ve done worse.”

She’s watching him out of the corner of her eye, and he’s looking at her with the deadpan expression he’s so accustomed to wearing. This moment finds them both submerged in complete disbelief, irony and utter ridiculousness that Akaashi is tempted to burst into laughter.

He opts to reach her as fast as he can, instead. His leather shoes carry him to the far end of the stage in a moment, and he can tell from her shifting shadow that she’s matching him step for step. Although he only has to wait half a second longer, it feels like the weight of the sea is dragging him down when he reaches out to trap her in his arms and never, ever let go.

She’s barely caught a breath, or a sob in this case, when he grips her face tightly in between his hands and covers her mouth with his in desperate apology. He drinks her up, each lap, each suck, until he’s sure that she’s the only flavour he’ll remember when everything is gone. He presses kisses along her neck next, or her forehead, or her eyelids, and anything else that he can reach because he promises that he’ll never take anything for granted anymore. She’s not always going to be with him, and he won’t always be allowed with her. This is yet another stolen moment, but to heck with it- Akaashi will sell every part of himself if it means that he can hang on to a few more of these.

He’s by no means a romantic, nor a very expressive man, but it’s the gravity of his decision that pulls him to one knee, cradling her hand in both of his. She looks ripped apart between relief and fear, but her eyes are wide and only for him in this one movement. Akaashi presses a kiss to her trembling knuckles.

“Marry me,” he tells her.

She’s silent for a second, until it’s broken by her hiccuping laughter.

“We’re already married, silly. You’re going to have to play me a different song this time if you want me to do it again.”

So he does. He pulls her beside him, slim figure pressed firmly against lean muscle and he begins to play a new song. Weapons on the ground, forgotten, and the promise of tomorrow’s daybreak also disappeared, the sound of fervent Piano Concerto in B-Minor: Allegro Appassionato winds together with the tune of an uncertain tomorrow, and a certain love. 


	37. Kuroo cries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> your angst is amazing. can i please have a scenario where kuroo thinks he's alone, so he cries, but then his gf startles him by giving him a hug from behind which leads her to comforting him and cuddling him until he falls asleep in her arms. i'm sorry, but boys who cry are my weakness and i will cry if they cry.  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Purely emotional and with very little plot, I hope this satisfies your long-awaited angst cravings. I hope you enjoy!_

He’s tried this, he’s thought this all through. It’s not an easy thing to admit you need, but Kuroo has, with trial and error, discovered the perfect place to cry alone. It doesn’t mean he spends all waking moment either playing volleyball or sobbing into the sleeve of his jersey, but everyone needs a moment alone sometimes, he thinks.

The cold, hard truth is- Kuroo Tetsurou is starting to crack, split at the seams, crumble into less than the dust of cremated dreams. It all sounds a bit dramatic to him when he thinks it out in his head, but there’s no hiding from the way his breath starts to stutter sometimes, the way his eyes seem to dim behind a veil of apathy and the way his words sound like ornaments instead of messages when they fall from his lips. It doesn’t feel dramatic at all, this fall from grace. It’s slow, pedantic, and it makes him feel like he’s running away when he finally takes a seat on the hard concrete, an unforgiving temperature from the evening chill the night before. The cold doesn’t shock him into awakeness or anything, because he can barely feel it against the numbness cradling his mind.

The sunrise is beautiful this morning, after a cold spell in Tokyo for the past week or so, and Kuroo lets the bone-wracking shiver run through his body, toes upwards. He’d usually want to take a picture of it, but today, he just sits and stares blankly into the purple and orange horizon. He turns on the music player on his phone, and a soft ballad starts to play in another language, something more hollow, more broken than the lyrical Tokyo-ben he’s surrounded with each day.

His music isn’t just an attempt at atmospheric background music as he sits and broods. No, this isn’t brooding when you feel absolutely nothing inside, and the music is his way of reminding himself that he’s alive. When he hums along, or bursts into small verses, it forces emotion back into him like a tidal rush of humanity, brightness squeezing in through the cracks of his broken heart.

_(Sometimes he laughs, because he can feel his heart crack-crack-cracking like pebbles on a windowpane and he finds himself utterly ridiculous. How can someone’s heart be broken by nothing? He isn’t the drama queen everyone seems to think he is, and he’s not about to let himself start now.)_

“Morning, Tetsu,” a soft voice floats from behind him and Kuroo stiffens in his seat. He knows this voice, intimately, blind and through his dreams, even, but he has tear tracks crusted on his cheeks and his breathing is a ragged mess.

What can he call this?

“Would you like a blanket?” Her voice comes again, this time infinitely closer and he can feel her small hands grazing his shoulders in an embrace he’s too tense to lean into. His expression is frozen, and he fixes his gaze onto the brightening sky in shame.

Fear, he decides, he calls this fear.

“You hate waking up early,” he tries laughing, but it’s feeble, and a blush of embarrassment rushes to his cheeks immediately, making him feel foolish for even trying. “I’m amazed you’ve figured this out.”

She doesn’t shift any closer than she already is. Barely pressed against him, the only thing he feels is her fingertips and her arm perching on his stoic shoulders and the places she touches burn underneath his skin. She’s waiting for him to touch her back, he knows this, like he knows everything about her- and, it appears, like how she knows everything about him too. Even this.

“I didn’t follow you, if that’s what you were worried about,” her voice is soothing, and as much as he absolutely can’t relax, Kuroo starts to thaw underneath her bottomless warmth. “I just… well, you were acting different lately. I just thought somewhere like this would be where you’d go, if I were in your shoes.”

“There’s no limit to your perceptiveness, huh?”

It was supposed to be teasing, but all he hears is bitterness and a tinge of fear that he doesn’t know if she picks up. He doesn’t find out, because she’s silent behind him for a few long seconds, her pulse in her fingertips the only thing moving.

“It’s cold today,” she finally says, and Kuroo feels like he’s aged a decade from suspense, “I brought a blanket. I’ll…” she pauses again and starts to shift backwards, “…see you later, if you’d like.”

“…Sorry,” he manages, after she’s taken several steps too far away from him. “It’s not like I don’t want you here, it’s just a bad time, y’know?”

A weight evaporates from his chest when he soon hears again her approaching footsteps. This time she doesn’t come to rest behind him, but instead takes a seat next to him, legs crossed in her usual fashion and her hands threaded together nervously. Kuroo has to hold back a snort there- if anyone was nervous, it’d be him, with his fragmented masculinity and possibly equally fragmented rationality. Still, he lets himself slump forward, the tension draining out of him and this time he opts to watch her fidgeting feet, shifting here and there like sand.

“You okay?” He’s the first to break the silence, and he hears her soft intake of breath in surprise.

“I… I think so,” she answers quietly from her spot next to his arm. “As long as you are.” Her head lifts, bangs blowing in what must be a chilly breeze, and her eyes meet his. They’re a lot firmer than he had expected, but he tenses and and makes a split second promise to stop running. To look her in the eye, to let her in like he had said he would when they had chosen to be together, instead of sitting here in his own misery, justifying it by saying it’s for her protection. Protecting no-one, misery only loves company, and she was right here with him, ready to be there if he falls.

Kuroo’s head hangs, and a small, but genuine smile creeps up onto his tear stained face. “When did you become this strong, hm?”

“I always was,” he can hear the grin in her voice, and even though it’s weak, the fear’s ebbing away drop by drop, and suddenly her warmth doesn’t feel like something that would burn him anymore. “You just pretended to be the one wearing the pants in the relationship.”

“Dang, whipping out the burns early in the morning. Did you come up with these on your way here?”

She doesn’t respond, and Kuroo doesn’t look away. In her eyes burn with the brightness of a dead star, in the twist of her lips rests the bones of an age old martyr, and she reaches one of those nervous, threaded hands and places one around the curve of his waist. God, it feels like relief and an offering wrapped into a single touch of affection, and Kuroo can’t stop the tears that bubble up from his throat and down his chin. For all it’s worth, he’s still looking at her, but her face is hidden behind a sheen of glistening daylight, and the lump in his throat feels like all the accumulated words he’d never dared to say out loud.

They don’t say a single thing after that. Her grip on his body tightens, and by the time she’s reaching out her other hand, swinging over a leg across his knees to keep her balance, he’s meeting her midway, collapsing his large frame into her small embrace. He’s crying now, just.. crying. As silently as he can, whimpers of submerged pain floating to the surface, shaking in her hold and he lets himself bury his ache into her shoulder, soaking her shirt bit by bit. Crying, instead of screaming, or wailing, or cursing, because sometimes there is a sadness so deep that he feels, anything other than simple, salty tears becomes inadequate.

He doesn’t move, but she does, shifting closer to him so that she’s pressed against his hip, dragging his torso closer into her as she can manage. Her hands are full of Kuroo, but she gathers more and more, taking purchase of his shirt and his belt loops until he’s spread over her and he can’t even find it in himself to mind that he feels like a child being comforted. It doesn’t matter, because he can feel the caress of fingers across his cheek, the soft circles rubbing into his back underneath his shirt, and between gasps he drags in a rough breath, her musky scent pulling him back to earth.

Neither of them have any clue how long they sit there for, the sky their only indication of time passing, but Kuroo can feel his lungs starting to fill up again, his ribs no longer heaving, and his eyes no longer throbbing from exertion. Slowly, the feeling of being a person becomes bearable again, and in her unwavering arms there grows a bud of courage that blooms in his stomach to face the day.

Kuroo closes his eyes once again, and counts his breaths. There are a thousand and one words he wants to say to her- six reasons why he’s sad, four dreams he still entertains, and one chance to tell her how he loves her.

A Kuroo-esque comment teases the tip of his tongue, but is lost when his heartbeat calms and the rise and fall of his chest takes on a slow rhythm. He falls asleep against her, head pressed underneath the veil of her hair, and she presses a shy kiss against his against his sleepy pulse before resting her head against his and dozing off together.


	38. Mafia AU ft. kidnapping with Akaashi, Kyoutani and Iwaizumi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> so a scenario with akaashi, kyoutani (if you do him) and iwaizumi where its like a gangau kinda thing and their s/o becomes a target for their rival gang and they kidnap her nd once the guys find her and stuff afterwards they treat her wounds and cuddles everywhere and fluffiness (unless they dont find her??? o.0) up to you but extra points for fluffyness at the enddd <333  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: This ended up far too long to be put in one post only, so I hope you don’t mind me breaking this up into several posts for each character like I did with my mafia au. There… might not be as much fluff in this as I expected, but I’ll make it up to you with the upcoming ones, I promise. I hope you like it!_

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  **Akaashi**   has never had to feel fear like this before, this thudding of his heart in his ears and it’s taking him so much energy to just  _breathe_. He knows that everyone’s looking at him, hyperventilating like a junior on their first mission, but it’s their strategy meeting for the rescue and all he knows is that he can’t focus. He can’t think of anything else but the image of you tied up against the headboard of a bed in a filthy room surrounded by men who don’t know a thing about you.

He’s not deluded enough to think that his gang is any better, but that doesn’t matter. This isn’t a battle of morality- this is a battle to get you back where you belong, and bash those fuckers’ heads in against the concrete floor until they paint the walls crimson. If there’s anything that he’s ever been good at, it would be killing, and loving you.

It’s a tense thirty minutes, but he sits through it, muscles tied up against his bone, fixing him posture rigidly against the conference chair until their boss waves a hand and dismisses them. Akaashi ignores the firm look he’s shot by the boss, a warning to not go too far, but there’s no too far for him. He hasn’t listened to a single word, utterly uncharacteristically, but he knows that his goal is something entirely different. They want you back because it’s a slight on their reputation. He  _needs_  you back because there won’t be a night where he doesn’t grieve over you if anything happened.

Akaashi leaves them all behind. The calls and shouts fall on deaf ears- they should have expected as much anyway, picking the silent one to focus on and now they’re paying the price- and he barely registers that it’s drizzling outside in the dim late afternoon glow. The note in blood said six, but it’s four thirty now and already two hours too late for him. He’s still in his suit, fresh from the executive meeting this morning, but this isn’t going to stop him. He cuts a horrifically formidable form as he stalks through the dark alleyways, hidden from anyone else but the scum of society, practiced leather heels pacing silently against the slick stones.

When he arrives, the only thing that looks vaguely out of place on him is the slight dampness of his suit bottoms from the rain. It’s a terrible hideout, Akaashi eyes it critically, but he supposes that their motive wasn’t to hide. It was a temporary storage unit, a meat fridge for them to keep all their necessary bags of flesh ready for the ransoming.

_If it’s meat they want to keep in there, it’s meat they’ll get._

None of that cloak and dagger shit, Akaashi steps right into the main foyer and jumps straight up. He launches himself from the banister and grabs hold of the dilapidating chandelier that once upon a time might have looked magnificent in a grand entrance. With an easy lunge, Akaashi swings himself onto the second floor without so much as a whisper of sound. He knows exactly where you are, thanks to the letter that they had sent the group just a few hours ago, and it’s nothing too difficult to find. They were expecting him, if they had any brains at all, and hopefully with a lot of cash in tow after checking out the place. Akaashi comes with his hands full indeed, calves, hips, side pockets all lined with a legendary array of weaponry and ammo, and he hopes that this is enough of a payment that they return you in one piece. He’s not calling it hopeful, he’s calling it a necessity, because if he finds anything more than a scrape on you, they’re not going to be dying anytime soon.

The hallway is lit dimly, age-old candle holders glowing from the shadows, and he has to hold in a scoff. Like some kind of demented welcome mat, it draws him further in until all the lights end at an unlocked door. Akaashi pushes it open with a harsh tap of his toe, opening towards him and he takes the smallest breath before he walks into view.

Perhaps they’re not as smart as he might have imagined, but he firmly ignores your agonizing presence in the back of the room and lets his muscles spring him into the action he was born into. The suffocating, enclosed room folds even further into itself when everyone scatters, scrambling to get away from the madman in the middle, but there isn’t a second where Akaashi doesn’t follow the movements of every single breathing organism inside that god-forsaken place. He cycles through the first clip of ammo in his dual handguns, aiming swiftly and sharply at the foreheads of the first ring of men around you. It’s a hail of wrath and steel, and he keeps in the back of his mind how many more are to go. He counts thirty people in total crammed into this small shithole, and that’s eight down. Snapping his wrists back, he let’s the magazine fall out of his guns and slams new ones in. Nine more down. The weight of his ammo is growing lighter, and Akaashi flips open the magnetic clip to re-holster the gun in his right hand to his waist. He pulls out the uzi strapped to his back, and starts to let it rain, the handgun firmly grasped in his left hand, picking out the people the uzi misses with single-shot accuracy. The room is no longer dim, flashing like lightning in a summer storm, the firepower of the automatic sparkles in a semicircle following his delicate footwork dodging the poor aim of his opponents. It doesn’t take much to take them down- with them so tightly packed, he doesn’t even have to aim for his bullets to hit at least one person. Perhaps they had been expecting him to bring a knife, or maybe something long and fancy, and planned on overwhelming him with numbers once he showed himself to be sufficiently under prepared, but Akaashi wasn’t stupid, and this isn’t his first rescue mission. This was the only one he cared about, however, which prompted him to bring the extra firepower in the first place.

The room rings silent, the thud of the last three bodies hitting the floor along with the soft tinkle of their corresponding bullet shells, announcing their finality with an almost melodic chime. Akaashi drags in the deep breath that he’d forgotten to inhale two minutes ago and stands absolutely still, letting the rush of adrenaline course away with the leftover oxygen back into his head. There isn’t a single sound made, and the longer he stays silent, the longer you also keep your lips closely pressed together.

The thing is, you had seen Akaashi Keiji, your fiance, doing his job before. Far from being an innocent, the two of you had actually met just after him shooting someone in the back in front of you, saving your hide and also scarring you for the next few days, but, you’d accepted it. You’d learned about it, and you know that it’s as much a part of him as he is in your life, but this,  _this_  is something completely different.

This isn’t just murder, this is bloodshed, and Akaashi stands right in the center of it, stoic and as unmoving as the glacier in his eyes. His suit isn’t pristine anymore, several shreds hanging off it to his left, and the sleeves dampening with grazes higher up his arm, and his shoes, they shine a dark crimson, glazing the soft italian leather like stained glass. There’s scarlet dripping from a cut on his upper lip, trickling down the corner of his mouth and pooling temptingly at his chin, plump and ready for it to fall, fall to the ground. The only thing that’s still pale is his pallor, and the undeniable sharpness of his collarbone, exposed from a ripped open collar, and it feels like a blade against your own throat, holding your breath in with a gentle graze of an edge. He’s looking right at you now, _into you_ , those navy eyes glowing with simmering rage despite the fact that there’s only the two of you in here, and you struggle, fight, revolt against those ropes holding you back from him. Even though he looks every inch a monster, he’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, and in that inscrutable curl of his fringe against arched eyebrows, you know that there are only echoes of the same thoughts in his mind.

In a single movement, he falls into you, collapsing on your wounds with almost frightening desperation, and even though his expression discloses nothing more than his usual solemnity, the fingers that press against you, flitting over every cut, every split of fabric-

“Keiji,” you whisper against his hair, almost pressed into your face with fervour, “I’m alright. It’s okay.”

“You’re alright,” he repeats almost in a trance, his head finally rising up to your eye level. His navy burns into yours, and you can see the colour in his face begin to drain back in second by second. “ _You’re alright_.”

You nod, slowly, not wanting to spook him with any sudden actions. “They were just waiting for you. They weren’t going to do anything to me unless you were very late.”

Akaashi doesn’t respond, his mind struggling to wrap around the sudden anger that cracks through him like tectonic plates, but he reaches out to cradle your head in his hands. They’re still incredibly still and nimble, you notice, and none of his anxiousness has bled into body like any average person would.

“You’re coming with me,” he breathes harshly, “you’re not going to leave my apartment for at least a week.”

“My, that’s bold,” you grin, and he shoots you a withering look.

“For security reasons.”

“Obviously.”

“ _Obviously_ ,” he mocks, and it makes you grin a little wider because this Akaashi you rarely get to see- one whose humour starts fraying at the edges when he’s shattered from a tiring day. “Please take things seriously. You were just kidnapped for ransom by a dangerous group of men.”

“And my boyfriend killed them all within ten minutes,” you retort, “if anyone’s dangerous it’s you.”

“I  _am_  dangerous.”

“Only when it comes to jokes,” you tease. It seems to be the last straw for him because Akaashi lets out a loud huff and tosses you over his shoulder, chair and all. You yelp in surprise, suddenly much higher off the floor than you’d like, but he doesn’t even pause as he heads towards the door.

He’s not looking at you now, no longer poring through your soul like leaves in a book, and for the first time that day, you let yourself crumble into his palm resting heavily against your lower back. Burying your face against his shoulder blade in determined silence, you let the ragged, exhausted breaths tear past your throat and Akaashi tightens his grip on you, a wordless promise, wrapping around you, that he’ll never let you be broken like this again.

 

* * *

 

 

It hadn’t been a pretty sight, watching the bodies fall one by one behind your swollen, bruised eyelids. Once you had been found and recovered to safety, everyone started talking to you like you weren’t there, like you weren’t right in the middle of it- like all those people on the floor,  _slaughtered_ , weren’t because of you. Of course, it might not have been, and you’re beginning to really think so. The boss had looked right past you when you were brought in to report, the group responsible had let their gazes linger over you with a calculating stare, glancing over you like potential collateral. You probably were, but before that, you had thought that you were at least part of the team. Well, until you got yourself caught. Until you became baggage.

“Thinking your way to hell again?”

It’s a rough, familiar voice that doesn’t give any leeway for gentleness to seep in, but it makes you smile all the same. Your shoulders melt a little, the press of your hands together slowly defrosting in this warm apartment that for now, is still safe. Nobody simply walks into the mad dog’s kennel, after all.

“You know how I am,” you throw a sheepish smile over your shoulder, “can’t help bad habits.”

“Hmm…”  **Kyoutani** , with a mug of something steaming in each hand, nudges you with a foot and settles down into the free space beside you on his sofa. “Guess it’s not all bad. Someone’s got to do the brain work after all.”

“And we all know how you are with that,” you tease. His stern face crinkles a little with amusement that’s only ever granted to you, and he sets the mugs down on the coasters in front of him. You’ve always wondered, for someone so brash and careless as Kyoutani, he’s oddly cautious of his own belongings. Like he’s protecting them, like once they’re gone, they’re gone for good.

You place a soft hand over his, and he looks at you out of the corner of his eye. “Thanks for getting me out,” you tell him. It’s an apology, you both knew that, but you also both knew how he hated hearing those.

Kyoutani shrugs, stiff and unfamiliar. “Just doing what I had to.”

Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t.

“They said that you were almost about to storm in alone and with a single knife trying to reach the room I was in.” A slight tilt upwards of your lip. “Like a hero.”

His face scrunches up with disgust and it makes you laugh, cackling and aching in a way you’ve missed. “Fuck that, do I look like some kind of hero to you?”

“Maybe not Superman,” you ponder, “maybe Robin? Oh,  _oh_ , you’re  _Superboy_.”

“No clue what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah right, don’t tell me you don’t peek at my comics when you think I’m not looking.”

“…You calling me angsty? I don’t punch walls and shit, not like that little shithead.”

“Uh.”

“What?”

“…You really do.” The cackles come again when Kyoutani’s face balloons up into a red fanfare accompanied with emanating heat and all. “You should have seen the way you looked after all those guys were taken down. Dark and mysterious and all that jazz,” you prod him with a finger, your eyes sly and twinkling with amusement at his expense.

Kyoutani, however, falls quiet. “Wasn’t a mirror, was there?” he says lowly, and all of a sudden it seems like he’s towering over you even though you’re not much shorter, and the shadows on his face seem like the only thing that colours it. “I saw you though. Tied up on the floor. Bruised. Bleeding.” He burns his own gaze into your eyes. “Fucked up by those assholes.”

“It wasn’t anything I couldn’t take.”

“And here you are,” he continues like you never said a word, “pretending like you’re tough. Pretending like you’re fucking steel.”

It hurts more than you expected it to. A sting to your pride- that irritating thing that keeps on rearing its head at the worst moments, and you force your head away. You can’t look at him now, not when he’s putting it like that. Not when he’s completely fucking right.

“I’m not weak,” you insist. You don’t know to whom anymore, at this rate.

“Didn’t say you were,” he replies, his voice uncharacteristically soft, and you have to wonder how much your abduction really scared him. How much he actually thought he had lost you, because he’s lost so much that he can’t even remember what he started off with in the first place. “But we all got our limits. You can’t just pretend they don’t exist because you want to be invincible. Bones break whether or not you want ‘em to.”

“Oh yeah? You looked like a demon when you walked in.” A harsh laugh pushes itself up your throat and it sounds so ugly that you wish you could cram it back in. “I was barely conscious, but I’m pretty sure what I took you gave back tenfold.”

Kyoutani shrugs again. This time easier, smoother, because he means it. “I was angry.”

“Angry’s bit of an understatement.”

“Does it fucking matter?” He’s pissed off now, you can tell from the way his arms tense up and how his words grow shorter. Something in you wants to flinch, but you stay fixed in your seat, determined to have this at least. “I was out of my fucking mind ‘cus I was so angry, okay? They fucking took you, under my goddamn nose, and I had to carry you out of that shithole. You barely had a patch of skin that wasn’t fucked up, so yeah, damn right I’m angry. But this isn’t the same and you know it.”

You breathe deeply, like you’re trying to breathe sense back into your life and what you get instead is a strong wave of the tea he knows is your favourite, his almost cologne-like musk that he leaves on everything, and the undercurrent of all the things they said he was when he found out that you had been taken. It’s enough, you think. Enough to not be the only girl in the team for one afternoon, for you to put down what had earned you their respect in the first place and just be be you. Be the person that Kyoutani Koutarou almost tore down his own team to reach.

Maybe that person isn’t so strong. Maybe that person did cry and scream when they were hurt, when the knives scraped under their skin. Maybe- no, definitely- Kyoutani knows all this.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs to you. The harshest voice reduced to the softest comfort, and he’s so close to you; his forehead is almost flush against yours, his eyes still burning bright right through you, his calloused hand cradling your cheek and the scars on his thumb are pressing along your own cuts that they had left on your face. In this moments, he’s everything, and there’s no disbelieving what he tells you now. “You can still be the tough girl, y’know. I’m not telling you to cry or anything but, I guess what I’m tryin’ to say is that it’s okay even if you did. I don’t care. It’s just human.” His gaze roam across all your bandages for a quick second before returning to yours. “You’re human. We’ll get better after we’re broken and all.”

He hasn’t quite finished yet, you can tell in his posture as he leans backwards to stretch for a second, and you don’t understand why anyone could think that Kyoutani’s anything other than genuine.

“Those wounds- seeing those wounds- it… it did something to me. It wasn’t great. I’d say fucked up, but you’ve probably heard that from me enough today, so.” There’s a sudden spread of a smile on his face that looks crooked and exhausting for him to maintain, but it glows warm against your mouth when he suddenly dips down to press a firm kiss to your cut lips. You stifle a smile of your own, because he kisses like he’s been holding it back for days, and it’s  _lovely_ , even though he’d kill you if he knew. He pulls back after a few, long, seconds, and you wait for him to finish his piece. “If I’m not the one who was beat up and it still hurt, it must have been fucking shit for you. I know.”

“I know,” you echo, and although your smile is a little wobbly, he seems to appreciate that much more than your earlier ones. Far more comfortable than when you had been teasing, at any rate, because he’s always been more observant than anyone gives him credit for. “You’re right. You’re always right when you don’t need to be,” you laugh, and he quirks an awkward grin at you, “but thanks.”

“Mhmm,” he nods, “no problem.”

“Still, the tea’s all cold now,” you say archly as you lean back into the sofa like a cat, and just like that, the tension’s gone and the warmth of his lived-in apartment returns. “Wanna just get ice cream instead?”

“I thought all women wanted to go on diets.”

“Yeah but not all women burn calories each day sparring with lunatics.”

“Call me a lunatic again and you’re not getting shit.”

You grin, a smile so wide that it splits your face and you leap up from your seat in anticipation.

“Oh yeah? Watch me.”

 

* * *

 

 

Being in a coma is nothing like they show you in movies. You don’t know if you’re breathing shallowly, or if a squad of surgeons are surrounding you, or if your room is filled with visitors or if you’re just alone. The thing is, all you remember was being punched, repeatedly, in the gut, and someone was kicking you from the back. It had been a while since you had been able to see out of your left eye from how swollen it was, and what kept you alive was the small mercy that they hadn’t touched you like  _that_  yet. Just for that, you took at least fifteen more blows with a faint smile. Then, someone came. The voice of someone you recognized burst into the room like a vuvuzela, and blood. Lots of blood. Theirs? Yours? Or maybe it was the rain of bodies around you, the sea spray of red highlighting the tips of your cheekbones, tinting your lips with a luscious red, and copper. The coppery, metallic drops sliding into your mouth no matter which way you faced in the darkness, and you lost consciousness before you heard your name being shouted out in the darkness.

It’s barely two minutes to you in the comfortable warmth of unconsciousness, but your eyes, glued shut with sleep and reluctance to have to function again, pry themselves open to the glaring light of the room you’re laid down in. It’s strangely quiet, and there’s no mistaking where you are despite the grogginess in your head- you’ve been in rooms like these, inhaled their fumes and borrowed their disinfectant enough to know that this is a  _hospital room_ \- and gods, you must have had it worse than you thought. Well, it’s difficult to tell how much damage you’re taking once the hits post-twenty start blurring together into this endless loop of pain.

You reach for the remote that controls your bedpan angle and press up.

“For some reason,” a disembodied voice comes from behind the curtain on your right, “I had a hunch that’d be the first thing you’d play with once you woke up.”

You drop the control remote almost like a child caught red handed with cookies before dinner, and you blush up to your roots as much as you can with your bloodloss.

“I didn’t hear you coming.” You admit with a slight tinge of petulance.

The voice,  **Iwaizumi** \- you’d recognize it even in your grave- brushes open the drapes surrounding your bed and makes himself comfortable in a soft, plush loveseat you didn’t notice either to your right. You know better than to question why there’s a sofa in the middle of a hospital room, so you choose to fiddle nervously with your fingers instead, waiting for the silence to break because he’s never this quiet without a good build up towards something.

“Want some water?” He offers you a cup of something clear and you stare. “It’s got electrolytes in it so it might taste different.”

“I…” you stumble, “…thanks.”

“No problem.”

He hasn’t looked into your eyes once, and this is possibly the most stressful water-sipping you’ve ever experienced in your life. He definitely sounds normal, although a little tired and perhaps tense, but that’s nothing you’re not used to already, knowing his line of work. The line of work that possibly got you into this mess in the first place, but you sure as hell aren’t going to bring that up right now. Not when this feels like a taut rubber band about to snap.

You sneak a glance at him again, and he’s staring fixedly at the clock on the bedside table. He turns his head slightly towards you, almost like he can feel your gaze, and you quickly snap your focus back onto that bland, white cup you’re holding.

How can time pass so  _slowly_?

“How long have you been here for?” You venture, tentatively, nervously. Goddamn stressfully.

“A while.”

“…Have you showered?”

Iwaizumi’s unimpressed stare meets your own and in it tells you exactly how much he doesn’t want to answer your questions. But he does, because he is who he is, and you are who you are to him. “Not yet.”

You can feel it, if nothing else, his urge to both cradle your face in his hands and give you a brutal scolding at the same time. He can’t, though, as much as he wants to, and you know why.

“It wasn’t your fault, Hajime.”

His lips press even tighter until they’re a thin, pale coloured line on his conflicted expression. He reaches a hand out to cover yours, and they’re endlessly warm compared to the thinness of your hospital sheets, as calloused and worn as they are around your own. His rough thumb strokes over the back of your hand, pressing deep circles into the dips of your bones and each touch feels like a confession.

Iwaizumi doesn’t believe you when you say that, and there’s nothing more you want in this moment than for him to take your word for it. “It was kind of terrible,” you try again, a different approach in hopes of reaching him somehow, “and I can’t say I’m not… not going to have nightmares about it, probably, but I didn’t blame you. Not for a second.”

“I was going to tell you off, you know,” he finally grumbles, so reluctantly that it draws a warm smile onto your face, “you’re not the one who should be doing the talking.”

“You were too quiet,” you giggle softly, “it was really awkward drinking water with you all moody.” Laughing is a bad idea though, because you can’t hide the wince that escapes from your mouth when a shake of your ribs shoots a flash of pain up your spine like lightning. Iwaizmi’s eyes miss nothing, and his arms immediately grab hold of your shoulders and commandeer you back down onto your bed.

He’s absolutely torn between comforting you and geting pissed off, so you grin at him shamelessly until he caves. The fingers never leave their firm press around your shoulder blades, and he leans in closer to you to make his point clearer. “Stay still. Don’t run off like that at night again, okay? I…,”  _‘it’s my fault, I’m sorry’_  dances across his face once and vanishes, “…I’ll keep better tabs on you so you don’t have to be trapped at home all the time.”

“I’m not-”

He levels you with a stare and you lose your argument. Your eyes fall to your hands in your lap instead, your words all jumbled up and slow to form. “I don’t mind.” Your tongue wraps around those words as carefully as it can. “You’re always here to take care of me, and I’d rather have a curfew and you around than have a whole night alone.”

When you glance back up, Iwaizumi looks like he’s furious at the wetness pooling in his eyes. Your heart is pounding with something that feels so far from fear, and your bandaged arms wrap around his neck as gently as they can to pull him closer to you. His hands copy you in an almost trance-like dance, and you nuzzle your face into his ragged palm, feeling his affection wash over you in the turbulence of a solar storm.

He’s not the type to ask himself why you chose him. Iwaizumi knows exactly what he loves about you, and what you love about him, and why the two of you seem to have so much more when you’re together than when you’re apart. Those nights with leftover pizza and terrible chick flicks weren’t just movie night, and those evenings spent wrapped around each other in his bed too large for the two of you were more than time passing with someone else. The two of you are multiplication, in every form, and the words aren’t nearly enough for it all when he lets them go.

“Please stay safe,” he cracks. “I need you safe. Home. With your shitty cooking and no bruises.”

“No more bruises,” you promise, “and food so shitty that you’re stuck on the toilet for days.”

“Sounds great,” Iwaizumi laughs.

It’s okay, those fingers seem to write on your cheek in soft swirls, you’re back, you’re safe, and he loves you.


	39. Analysis: Breaking down my volleyball squad into thought-sized pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a way, you could treat this as a character analysis. Perhaps even as unpopular headcanon, but here are some of my thoughts on the personalities of my favourite Haikyuu characters, past the first, second and third layer into their depths. Not entirely pulled out of my ass, these are just thoughts I’ve gathered from observing them in both anime and manga. Am I right, or am I wrong? There’s no answer, but you’re free to disagree.

**KUROO TETSUROU.**

He’s my absolute favourite, but I’m not above picking at his flaws- one of the biggest reasons why I love this character so much. There’s so little revealed in the anime or manga, usually just as the ‘Captain’ or ‘Rival’ figure, but there’s so much underneath that gets glossed over very easily.

How much strength does it take for someone to pull together (and lead) a team that seems to be a gathering of strange misfits? Through in-game dynamics they seem to flow seamlessly, but if you think about it- the personalities of these people wouldn’t be the type to click together in a classroom or anything. Who binds them all? It’s Kuroo. There’s this solid, grounded feeling to him, when he needs to be. The keyword being  _need_.

I have absolutely no evidence of anything I’m going to say next, but it’s a general feeling. Anyone with such prowess at provoking people, yet managing to admit their mistakes (e.g. pissing off Tsukishima), there’s definitely something. To me, Kuroo feels like the type of character that’s been there. He knows what to say, what parts hurt the most and when he needs to apologize because he’s said all these things to himself a thousand times in his head. He remembers the time when he chose not to apologize, or was too afraid to, and the consequences stung afterwards. He’s not a natural born genius at anything, but he has talent, and he’s honed his personality to fit what he has, over time, come to expect for himself. Kuroo Tetsurou knows what kind of person he doesn’t want to be- not necessarily the person he wishes to be- and he works to avoid it.

There’s a solid determination to him that’s malleable. He doesn’t seem to be made out of steel and rock, like Daichi, and he’s not insanely inspirational, like Oikawa. He’s just… him, and he rises to the challenge the best he can when it’s posed to him. He’s not the type to be different on and off court either- I think he just tackles everything with the same frame of mind ‘to do his best, and to solve the problem’. Amidst his moments of insecurity alone, where he probably sits on his bed in his room and wonders what he’s doing with his life and if he’s really good enough, he brushes all those away because he knows that it’s not important. Things he can’t change aren’t important, and what he can do is make the best of things. He doesn’t believe in himself as much as other people thinks he does, and he’s nowhere near as cocky when he’s being truthful, but the thing is, he’s okay with magnifying those aspects of himself when it makes things easier, when it makes people happier. He’s not lying, not pretending to be someone else he’s not, but there are things he exaggerates because it’s better for everyone. I wouldn’t say that he’s untrusting, or untruthful. In fact, he seems like the type to, if he decides you’re a decent person, to answer all the questions you ask him depending on your motive (he’s not going to tell you anything that will affect your performance, e.g. his teammates).

To me, what’s most admirable about Kuroo is the fact that he seems like the type to have moments where he falters, where he doesn’t think he can do it anymore, but he picks himself up, or asks for help when he needs it (thank god for Kenma), and he  _keeps going_. It’s this sense of persistence and a combination of wicked humour and a laissez-faire attitude that keeps him sane, that makes him who he is. So, where does his confidence come from? Is it genuine? Absolutely. He has the ability to be the best middle blocker, he has the ability to rise up to life’s challenges as they come. He knows this, and that’s what makes him confident. He’s quite fine with the kind of person he is right now, and that is more than enough for him to go on.

 

* * *

 

 

**BOKUTO KOUTAROU.**

This boy is probably youth personified. There’s so many people who reduce him to the ‘happy-go-lucky’ character, and it’s such a shame that neither the anime nor manga fleshes out his character much. Bokuto is so much more than just happy. This is a guy who has actually  _fought_  for happiness- and for that, you have to choose happiness first, and that’s a difficult choice to make. So many people with any sort of ambition chases it for their own reasons, sometimes it’s success, sometimes it’s fame, sometimes it’s glory and sometimes it’s pride, but I think that because Bokuto has never griped about not being ‘the best’, he honestly plays volleyball because he wants to enjoy the sport for what it is. He wants to feel happy and excited when playing it- and what did he do when he wasn’t feeling that in his junior years? He just kept on practicing, until he finally, finally said ‘volleyball is fun’.

Don’t mistake me, Bokuto has heaps of ambition. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be practicing so much, wouldn’t be fighting so hard for nationals and groaning about Ushiwaka. He just wants to be good! He doesn’t need to be better than everyone else, he wants to get to Nationals because being good is fun, beating people is fun, and everything is just  _fun_. He’s not proving anything to anyone. Would you agree?

Just because someone likes having fun, doesn’t mean they’re utterly high on excitement all the time. In fact, solid practicing until he enjoys it is what  _Bokuto_  says, not any other character. Who gave the speech to Tsukishima? Bokuto. Life hasn’t been all great for him, and the fact that he’s able to say all this, to advise someone is because he’s been there too. He’s overcome those obstacles with who he is and his work ethic, and now he’s in a better place to be the happy guy he is. Unless it’s because of sheer luck, there is no character who can be happy-go-lucky and have things go perfectly for them, because then that’s either a comedy, or a mary-sue. We can probably all agree that Bokuto isn’t either.

He isn’t prideful, he doesn’t overestimate himself. You all probably have gathered this from his ‘don’t toss to me anymore!’ drama. He does say ‘I’m the best!!’ and it’s funny, because he’s such a great guy when he’s confident, but do I really think he believes he’s the best? Far from it. Honestly, I don’t think Bokuto cares about being the best. He just cares about being the best version of himself, and that kind of mentality is far beyond his years.

Bokuto Koutarou is an honestly inspirational character. Although everyone in this series is very admirable, he’s a clear picture of what it’s like to power through yourself, power through all the things you can think that will drag you down (he doesn’t mope because his spikes were blocked, he practiced the fuck out of his spikes until they just couldn’t block him anymore). He’s incredibly kind and probably lacking all judgmental tendencies; asking a first year, a stranger from another school to practice with him on equal terms (in Asia, I think that’s a flippin’ miracle), and he has a silly, endearing sense of humour that has his entire team gravitating towards him. They all know what he’s like, what he’s capable of- all the good and bad- and what do they think? They obviously love the shit out of their captain, and it’s high time we were all told why.

 

* * *

 

 

**AKAASHI KEIJI.**

Here we’re brought to someone who’s often misunderstood and is tied tightly to Bokuto. First, I gotta address all the things people say about him being cold and calculating. I don’t want to diss anyone, but firstly, Bokuto isn’t stupid. He’s a combination of emotion and intelligence that brings him to where he is (volleyball strategy is  _hard,_ dude), and someone like that would not be friends with a cold and calculating person. Someone like that wouldn’t give Bokuto shit either, because that’s counterproductive to their goal. Does Akaashi give Bokuto shit? 99.9%, like detergent.

And why settle for Bokuto? Why not move on to someone bigger, someone better? If he’s that ambitious, I think the intelligent thing to do is to make friends with absolutely  _everyone_. Feed them what they want, what fluffs their feathers, latch onto the best people possible. Akaashi, has very few friends, I think, outside of his own team. Every time he appears, it’s with Bokuto (this might be because of panel limits and screen time limits, but I don’t like to think so) and it’s clear that they’re nigh inseparable. Calculating and ambitious? If I were that intelligent and ambitious, I’d take the train to become Sakusa’s next bff. Akaashi literally never caters to Bokuto. He is never shown doing something he doesn’t want to do, and very rarely do you see him actually agreeing with someone, I’ve noticed. He just doesn’t object, or actually does object. 101 for sucking up to people- always agree, even if it’s bullshit. Bokuto has obviously been shot down so many times by Akaashi it hurts. I mean,  _aKAAAAAAAAAAAshiiiii,_ it’s a practiced plea _._ There’s even a compilation on YouTube.

What kind of guy do I think he is? Honestly, just a pretty socially disinterested high school dude who happens to like tossing balls at people. He makes friends, he talks to new people easily, just that he sounds like he doesn’t really want to. He doesn’t avoid people, but he’s not the social butterfly. He talks to Kuroo literally because he’s  _always around Bokuto,_ and he talks to Tsukishima ‘cus he’s there. He includes Hinata very quickly in their 3v3 too- there’s none of the ‘you’re short’ or ‘you’re an underclassman, I must address this’ glance. He just goes ‘oh, another person’. Sure, you can call that cold, but sometimes I’m like that too, not because I’m mean but because you’re literally just another human being I will get along with.

Akaashi is pretty much the definition of down to earth. He’s not so down that he’s underground and on the other side of the world, fitted with a VR system like Kenma, but he just gets on with his shit. He’s clearly not slow and steady from the split second decisions he makes on court and the way he sets, but he’s a no-nonsense kind of guy when it comes to himself. Clearly he doesn’t mind with other people, like Bokuto. It’s really cute, actually, because these two characters bring out the best in each other. They’re not a conventional pair, but they’re the opposites attract in every successful way possible. They make each other normal, they make each other human. Without Bokuto to put some silliness into his life, Akaashi would be too serious. Without Akaashi to drag him back down from the clouds, Bokuto would probably forget himself sometimes, and his school bag that he’s probably left in the classroom three days in a row.

If anything, I’d say that out of all the dynamics in the show, Akaashi and Bokuto would be one of the healthiest and happiest out of all of them. Friends or lovers, they don’t need to be shipped. This ship will sail on its own, even in reality.

 

* * *

 

 

**OIKAWA TOORU.**

Lastly, the great king appears! The character to end all characters, Oikawa Tooru is, to me, the most fascinating character out of the entire cast. The most facets (even though I’d probably need some new meditating techniques to deal with him irl) and the most interesting backstory, this guy is literally made out of the dreams of fanfiction writers who bash their OCs lovingly with painful pasts.

There are very few people who misunderstand this guy, he’s so well loved because he’s so damaged. Still, I want to include him because he’s like a maze, and even though the end’s been found already, it’s always worth to give it another run through.

So. Quite the legendary character with existing angst about his abilities, he’s got one of the most relatable dilemmas out there: I’m not a genius, and I’m not talented. All I’m doing is trying my best (why, I don’t know), but you’re telling me I’m still gonna be overtaken by some kid prodigy? Fuck that. Okay, the fuck that I added, but that’s that. Yes, it makes a great premise for a complicated character, but the thing is, Oikawa might be less complicated than a lot of people think. Rather than the bad things, I think Oikawa is honestly quite pure at heart. I mean, think about how much dedication you would require for you to, in the face of this truth being a part of your team every day of middle school, relentlessly work yourself to the bone because you want to prove it wrong? Because, despite how unfair life is and how much shit everything sounds, he loves volleyball, it’s what he’s  _good_  at even if he can’t be the best, and he’s going to die before he stops working at it. This man is made out of a core of tempered steel, and a single-track mind. I think this character is literally the representation of ‘hard work trumps natural genius’ that gets passed around often. Whether it’s true or not is a different story- one that Oikawa clearly doesn’t believe in- but it’s not stopping him. Nothing is stopping him, because I think he knows that he can’t control anything in this world except for himself, and what he chooses to sacrifice.

Another important thing to note is his specialty. You’d think someone like Oikawa would want to work towards having the best serves, or the most complicated set-ups, or the highest success rate, right? Try to beat the prodigies with what matters? No. He comes up with his own methodology, the same one that makes Ushiwaka tell him he  _ought to have gone to Shiratorizawa_ , because he brings out the best in the people he plays with. Kind of strange for someone who seems so selfish, right? That brings us to the next point.

Yet, the thing is, it seems that the only thing he’s solidly believing in are his choices. There’s heaps of insecurity behind the playboy, the arrogant, the petty and mean guy that he literally crafts himself out to be. Is it just an image? Honestly, I think so, because it would be impossible to maintain such cognitive dissonance between his decisions and his behaviour. It’s a coping mechanism, a defense mechanism so practiced since a young age that Oikawa probably believes in it sometimes. Perhaps he has moments in bed alone, when he breaks down because he’s such a mess of opposing things and he becomes disillusioned with all the things he pretends to be because he really  _isn’t_. Oikawa is very kind to the people he plays with, and for someone to ‘cater’ to a play style you have to be intuitively empathetic to predict their preferences. He doesn’t try to bring Kageyama down because it makes him feel better about himself- no, he just gives Kageyama shit ‘cus he thinks he’s allowed to be petty sometimes with the lemons life has given him, and honestly, it doesn’t make him feel a bit better. That’s why on the sidelines, he just bitterly admits that Kageyama’s a good fucking setter, because he really is. Oikawa doesn’t deny the truth. In fact, he just simply breaks through it, because it’s the only thing he can do.


	40. Valentine's Special, Kuroo Tetsurou flavoured confessions.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Kuroo is really sweet, and really, really not cool.

“So, uh, are you free today?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” you’re chuckling and Kuroo feels his heart rate calm down a little, “ _it’s only 8am, but yeah, I’m free today_.”

“Okay. Good, good.” There’s an awkward pause, and then it’s just him breathing and you breathing and damn, the static in the receiver is actually pretty terrible. Maybe this is why Kenma always texts instead.

Speaking of Kenma, Kuroo casts a glance over at his best friend currently sprawled on his bed with an unimpressed look on his face. The judgement spreads like radiation and Kuroo’s face heats and flattens at the same time.

He clears his throat. “I’ll see you at noon.”

_“Sounds good. Usual train station?”_

“Ah- no, I’ll… I’ll come pick you up.”

There’s a suspicious pause and Kuroo holds his breath like an olympic swimmer.

 _“If you say so,”_ you finally reply, and he depressurizes with the finality of a pricked balloon.  _“Gonna go clean up. See you later!”_

Tapping on the big red button to end the call, Kuroo sighs like his life depends on it. He rests his head between his legs and groans. “I kind of hate you right now, Kenma.”

The boy in question just snorts and executes a double combo in Monster Hunter. “You’re the one who’s been running away from this for the past month.”

“Yeah, and I’ll just keep running. Burn off some calories in the meantime.”

The tapping slows down a little and Kuroo’s ears prick up, waiting for whatever quip comes next at his expense. It’s eight in the morning, and waking up his buddy is like waking up a bear with a rooster, but slightly more dangerous, because he’s within arm’s reach.

Kenma puts his console down, and grips onto, for the first time in his life, Kuroo’s cheeks and peers right into those confused, golden eyes.

“Stop being an idiot. It’s Valentine’s Day, and this is  _Tokyo_. If you don’t ask her, someone else will.”

Kuroo is quite bewildered indeed. Satisfied with rendering his friend speechless, Kenma gives a little nod and turns back to his game.

“…Isn’t that White Day-”

“Kuro, just shut up.”

 

* * *

 

It’s 11:30, and he’s thirty minutes too early. He doesn’t want to seem too eager, so he sort of camps a few houses away so that you can’t see him even if you did look out your window. You know, it’s never occurred to him how well he knows your neighbourhood by now- you’re not exactly neighbours, but this road is almost like second nature to him, somewhere he’d walk if he was in a trance, perhaps. His feet tap anxiously against the rough asphalt ground, and he feels like his pulse is going to beat beat beat the hell out of his arteries and explode in a rush of embarrassment. This is, in his many years of life, the first time he’s done something like this for someone. His friends can testify, because he’s honestly never really had to woo a girl before (his sweaty shirt stuck to his volleyball-honed biceps would do the trick), but you’re different. You’re so different it hurts, and he’s not sure if it’s in a good or bad way.

Regardless, it’s 11.55, and he takes extra large, extra nervous steps towards your house. You’re not quite outside yet as he can still hear the ruckus inside and your voice echoing from your bedroom window, so he lets himself in, just like home.

Your mother greets him first, an excited grin on her face when she sees Kuroo padding through the hallway.

“She’s upstairs,” your mother practically beams, “gosh, I’m so excited for you two!”

“Afternoon to you too!” Kuroo laughs warmly. What she’s excited for, he’d never know, because it’s not like you never hang out with each other, and if there was anyone else watching, they’d think that he was taking your mom on a date instead.

 _Date._  Good God.  _It’s just a hang out_ , he corrects himself, and Kuroo feels like giving his mind a smack.

“Hey, sorry ‘bout that, I’m ready, I’m ready,” you call from your clumsy descent down the stairs and Kuroo feels his palms start to sweat a little. “So,” you smile that crooked smile at him, and he’s utterly charmed, “adventure time?”

“Adventure time,” Kuroo agrees with an uncharacteristic gleam, “let’s head out, cadet.”

“What a dork,” you snicker as you pass the gates held open for you, and you barely manage to dodge the whack aimed at your arm.

“Don’t be an ass,” he sing-songs to you, “that role’s mine.”

“Okay,” you nod, “I’ll stick to being the cadet.” You give him a brisk salute, and Kuroo wonders if his chest might be melting.

 

* * *

 

The first stop, he tells you, is to eat, because he’s fucking starving. You had laughed at his deadpan expression, but he had broken into a soft smile at the sound of your laughter when you were turned away. The taiyaki stand had only opened recently, almost constantly crowded because of how close it was to Tokyo University, where both of you went, and Valentine’s Day is absolutely no exception. It’s a twenty minute wait, but Kuroo supposes that the both of you have the whole afternoon to yourselves, and the way your eyes sparkle when you take in the ridiculous line (why you love crowds is something he’s never understood) is enough to convince him to stay.

Time passes by easily, thanks to the two of you sharing the same dreadful humour, and sooner or later you had Kuroo in stitches from all the snarky remarks you made about the people around you. ‘Happy Singles-Day’, he had snorted through gasps of air, and the both of you had gathered not too few dirty looks from the couples both in front and behind. Neither of you mind at all; in fact, when Kuroo takes a bite of his custard filled taiyaki, it just makes it taste all the better. Bravely, he sneaks another glance at you, and a swell of satisfaction grows in his belly when he sees you even happier than you were an hour ago.

You can’t help but look at him suspiciously when he wraps his hand around yours and refuses to keep eye contact for very long.

“There’s a lot of buskers set up in the park right now,” Kuroo grins and waves an extra taiyaki in his other hand, “wanna choose the best and donate this fish to a good cause?”

This isn’t the first time he’s held your hand, and it’s not like it’s deliberately tender, but there’s something about it that makes your face heat up, and you hope that you’re not blushing too much. You nod, a gentle smile on your face, and Kuroo lights up and nods approvingly, as if congratulating himself on a good idea. After all, you’d been such a busking nut that you’d skip classes just to hop into the nearby gardens to watch some piano playing.

He hopes he’s not being too eager, but he pulls you along gently, and the two of you fall into easy steps, following the distant sound of guitar chords.

Kuroo was right, of course, there is an entire herd of buskers this afternoon, all set up a respectable distance from each other, but they’re all crooning the same theme- love songs, lots and lots of them. And like larks, the park is utterly filled with couples of all shapes and sizes, but all gazing at each other with the same type of adoration in their eyes. Kuroo just waves his taiyaki in front of you again, and like that, your attention is refocused.

“Thinking out loud,” you whisper on tiptoes to him, not wanting to disrupt the stunning performance, “wanna count how many times we’re gonna hear this song in an hour?”

“You’re on,” Kuroo whispers right back.

The two of you applaud loudly when this performer finishes with a happy smile on his face, and after a rain of random donations from the crowd surrounding him, you tug your best friend along to the next band.

You arrive when they’re just setting up, testing their instruments and revving up to go, but Kuroo can feel the exact moment when you jump a little in surprise. The smile on his face is supposed to be reassuring when you glance at him in bewilderment, but the moment you look away again, he’s sure that there’s nothing but nervousness in the crease of his smile. Akaashi, as always, just watches the two of you from his position behind the drums with his usual lidded gaze, and gives Kuroo an imperceptible nod before getting out of his seat for the two of you.

The look on your face is split between surprise and excitement- probably from the fact that it’s a new discovery that the model student Akaashi Keiji would play the drums and busker on Valentine’s Day (where is Bokuto anyway?)- and he’s walking straight towards you, an ambiguous smile teasing the edges of his lips. He stops when he’s almost right in front of you, and leaning down, he murmurs, with a kind smile, “I hope you enjoy the performance today.” Patting your head once, he slips a strangely shaped piece of card behind your ear and slinks back into his seat.

Nothing less that expected, Akaashi performs without a single flaw. His hair whipping almost artfully against his sweat-slicked forehead, he looks a vision of rhythm and percussion in his sleeveless shirt and ripped, black jeans. All of that, only Kuroo seems to be paying attention to, because you’re still a little too stunned to focus on anything other than the music.

“Keiji,” you repeat to yourself.

“Yup,” Kuroo simply says.

“Hmm…” a thoughtful tilt folds your brows as you twirl the misshapen piece of card almost mindlessly in your hand. Kuroo’s thankful for the animated busking, otherwise he’d have never managed to tear his gaze away from the curious flicker in your eyes. Before the two of you head out, he hands Akaashi the taiyaki when you’re not looking, and he’s rewarded with an amused eyebrow raise and a quiet ‘good luck’.

 

* * *

 

You find out where Bokuto is far sooner than you expected. The second stop, Kuroo takes you once you’ve seemed to have regained your senses, is a visiting carnival set up for the new year that hasn’t been taken down yet even two months later. It’s not quite as filled with couples as the park earlier, but there’s a fair amount mixed in with the families as the decorations almost glitter constantly with pink, red and a lot of shimmering hearts hung up on wires in the sky.

Kuroo’s a little astonished and slightly relieved at the fact that you hadn’t commented outright on the amount of activity in one day. Sure, the two of you hung out pretty often- almost whenever there was spare time, really- but a lot of it was going to the arcade, or sitting at the cafe in bookstores or battling each other on Pokemon Sun and Moon by the Sumida River.  Even more, and Kuroo’s favourite, would be lazing about at his apartment, either snacking on a shared packet of chips or taking turns trying to beat each other’s record time against the Adamantoise.

Now a theme park, he’s almost confident that you’ll like it, this screams a little too loudly of ‘special occasion’, but the cotton candy that you almost conjure out of midair is enough to distract the both of you from any actual thinking.

“Rides?” He asks in between mouthfuls of pink, and you gaze pensively up at the rollercoaster.

“Bumper cars?” You suggest instead, “I like my food in my stomach too much for a 360 flip right now.”

You’re rewarded with a guffaw and a rich smile that leaves you oddly pleased with yourself. This time, you’re the one to take his hand in yours, deceptively smooth despite years and years of volleyball, and tug by tug, you drag him towards your favourite death vehicles.

It’s a vicious sport, and neither you nor Kuroo go easy on each other. Sometimes you think that there ought to be an Olympic Sport for this because you’re so adept at drifting on tiny, wired cars that it sends some calmer, more normal couples flying in their karts. It’s almost like monopoly for you two- when there are cars and crashing involved, you’re mortal enemies no matter what anyone else says. Not even the attendant, who has to stop you twice to tell you to calm the fuck down, because by the time the ride ends and Kuroo has to grip your arm to keep you upright, the attendant actually gives the two of you a respectful thumbs up out of sheer amazement.

“Wow, you guys are ruthless,” a bright and all too familiar voice cuts through the chorus of cackles you and Kuroo share, “I’ll teach you volleyball if you teach me how to drive like that.”

“You better be talking to her, Kou,” Kuroo intones, not surprised at Bokuto’s appearance all, “‘cus you’re a hundred years too early to be telling me I gotta learn volley from you.”

“Don’t you wanna be the best wing spiker ever???”

“Not really,” Kuroo grins and claps his best friend on the back in a very manly embrace, “then I’d have to compete for ace against a beast.”

Bokuto puffs up his chest in pride at the compliment, and finally, he turns his attention to you. His eyes are as bright and golden as always, and today, in the blazing sun, he looks almost like a deity from a myth somewhere, descending onto earth for… for what, exactly?

He cracks a wide grin at your confusion, and with a dramatic flourish, he proffers a small box of Hershey’s Kisses from an obscure pocket in his pants and hands it to you. There, on top of the box and underneath the blue bow, is another piece of odd card.

“Happy holidays!” Bokuto crows too cheerily, “enjoy the rest of your day!”

You can’t help but break into soft laughter at his enthusiasm. “Isn’t happy holidays for christmas?”

“Christmas, Valentine’s, it’s all the same when you’re spending it with someone you care about, innit?” Bokuto shoots a sly look at Kuroo, and said man immediately shoots an unimpressed expression right back. “Gotta bounce though, got a date with a hot drummer to get to.” He winks at you, not suggestively at all and far too happily, before spinning around on his heels and strides away with eager steps.

 

* * *

 

You  _still_ haven’t said anything yet, and Kuroo can feel his nerves winding up tighter and tighter by the second. He knows from experience that you’re far too perceptive for your own good (you can predict his grades far better than he can, and ‘alone time’ is almost impossible if he’s meeting with you later in the day because you just, somehow,  _know_ ), but there’s been radio silence about anything serious. He supposes it’s a good thing, that neither of you seem to pause in your usual banter, and the sea of couples across Tokyo doesn’t seem to faze either of you a bit, and almost, just almost, he can forget that he’s supposed to be nervous as hell and that this just a normal day, with a normal friend.

The two of you are on your way to location three- your favourite coffee shop to take a well deserved break from too much play. The walk there feels almost instinctive because of how often you’ve both headed there at some point or another, and it’s one of those soothing shops with free WiFi and low, indie music and gourmet coffee. Sure, perhaps it’s a little above student standards but the atmosphere is one in a million, and you know someone who works there, almost ensuring you a discount each time.

This is why meeting Oikawa’s eyes is the first non-surprise of the day. He’s always been a bit loftier with Kuroo, but he figured that someone like Tooru needed some warming up for unless you were a girl, which automatically dumped you in the ‘acceptable’ part of the venn diagram. This time however, although he did meet your eyes, Kuroo sought his gaze out and true to form, Tooru peered at him meaningfully, an almost inconceivable nonverbal conversation between two prickly friends. Well, prickly would be Oikawa, but to tell the truth, Kuroo doesn’t believe for a second the pretty boy is fooling anyone with the weekend visits to his apartment and Star Wars marathons at 4am.

“The usual?” Kuroo asks you, pulling the chair out with one hand for you to sit in. It doesn’t surprise you in the least.

“Please,” you give him a grateful smile and tap at your phone to shoot him the balance back on PayPal. Kuroo catches sight of your movement at the last second and wraps his fingers firmly over your screen.

“On me,” he insists, staring into your eyes like he’s trying to drown you with sincerity, “Valentine’s Day and all, remember?”

That brings a slight grin to your face, but it’s accompanied with a soft blush that doesn’t fade away quickly enough. Your throat seems to close up a little, and Kuroo doesn’t let go of your phone until you finally nod and clear your throat shyly. He leans, back, satisfied, but it doesn’t stop him from plucking your Samsung straight out your fingers.

“Just in case,” he smirks cheekily at you, and you can’t help but shake your head with exasperation, something undeniably fond in the flickers in your eyes.

He comes back quickly, almost melting into the softness of the padded seat and tosses the receipt onto the table between the two of you. He absolutely doesn’t hand the phone back to you, no matter how you made faces at him, and the feeling of having you all to himself even if just for a few minutes warms him up more than any coffee could.

A loud ahem tosses you both back into reality, and Kuroo glances up to see the judgmental expression on Oikawa’s face. He can almost hear it: ‘ _Stop eyefucking each other and just get it over with already’._  He’s not wrong, so Kuroo shrugs very slightly and Oikawa seems to let out a sigh, disguised as a wisp of steam from both cups on the tray in his hands.

“Have a lovely evening, you two. A mocha and a cappuccino, for my best regulars.”

To his credit, there’s no heart on either drink, only an artistic swirl characteristic of Oikawa’s unexpected talent for latte art, and Kuroo feels his lips curl up in a pleased groan at the musty taste of coffee on his tongue.

“Another one,” you murmur, and Kuroo is brought back down to earth by the low hum of your voice. He watches in silence and with his best poker face as you twirl the piece of card, now shaped like puzzle pieces, you realize, in your fingers before pocketing it along with the rest. You glance up at him, a question mark on your face and Kuroo simply shrugs again and shakes his head.

“No clue,” he intones, “must be a giveaway kind of thing. From Toudai, maybe.”

“…Maybe,” you nod, gaze lingering on his guileless face before shrugging too. Kuroo’s breath of relief comes out in a shuddering rush, and he wraps his fingers tighter around his mug.

 

* * *

 

The last stop, Kuroo has to promise you this time, the  _last_ , is an outdoor ice skating rink. He’s rather pleased with himself with this selection, because not only have you been bugging him about going to one of these before it gets too warm, he knows that there’s no way you wouldn’t be thrilled at the chance to whizz around at high speeds. He’s right, of course, and the beam on your face is more than enough recompense for the exhausting day. It’s not quite evening yet, the edges of purple only starting to tinge the sky with an odd glow, but it’s late enough that the lights surrounding the rink have been turned on. It looks like a magical christmas in February, and the moment you step onto the ice, you’re off.

Kuroo only watches with amusement as you literally fly circles around the rink over and over again, that silly smile on your face as solid as ever and he quietly slides about, comfortable enough to hang about and wait for you to calm down.

“How’s life as a penguin?” He snarks at you when you finally slow down to his side. You just snort and grin, because this happens every time. The thing is, everything you’ve done today is nothing new, the two of you have traversed these treacherous roads hundreds of times, yet, there’s something buzzing in the air that sets the atmosphere on edge a little. It’s not a bad feeling, Kuroo decides, and there’s definitely no lack of edge when it comes to your energy and ice skating.

“Penguins don’t glide, Tetsu,” you laugh.

“Yeah, but they have their tummies. Have you watched them slide down things? They’re like rockets.”

“What, you expect me to lift up my shirt and slide around on my stomach?”

“Whatever rocks your boat, man.”

He receives the punch on his arm with grace, and it doesn’t dull the smirk on his face a bit. Perhaps the two of you make an odd pair, bickering but with vastly different expressions, but it feels just like normal. Kuroo offers his hand to you, long fingers and frozen grip, with a tilt of his head. You don’t even hesitate before taking it, and you tug.

Kuroo’s lived through enough to know that gentle hand-holding on ice is not what it sounds like. It’s Valentine’s Day, and a lot of couples are helping each other amble through the ice step by step, giggle by giggle, but there’s the two of you. You grip his hand in a vice-like grip, almost daring him to let go like a wuss, and Kuroo finds himself being tugged along at a breakneck speed, the gentle breeze turning into the frigid winds of the Arctic. He can’t quite hold in the laugh that bubbles from him, so he narrows his eyes and laughs his heart out, his skates kicking behind him furiously and matching you step for step.

It’s thrilling, and he supposes that the two of you could be lying down on a mattress in the middle of nowhere and it’d still be thrilling. Your smile says so anyway, and Kuroo lets himself fall into it like a dive.

“Alright, alright,” you finally concede at least ten minutes later, “I’m getting tired.”

“Finally!” Kuroo groans with a broad grin, “I’m literally just waiting for you to burn out, you know that right?”

“I know,” you sigh disappointedly, “can’t fight the lazy forever.”

“Best part about you, in my opinion.”

The shit-eating grins the two of your share almost steam the cold around you with how gently it bubbles with warmth.

“Human pace?”

“Human pace.” This time it’s you who offers your hand to him, and Kuroo grips it gently yet firmly with his own, his fingers brushing over yours with almost careful reverence. He leads you over the ice, your joined hands hanging peacefully between the two of you, pushing at a pensive speed with your blades. Kuroo can’t help but notice the way the lights fall against your complexion, even this early in the evening, and this time instead of simply staring, he lets his anxiousness melt away and smiles, because no matter what you are to him, there’s just something mystical about your expressions, and he simply can’t help but love them.

“Hey,” a different voice floats from behind you, and at this point, you really shouldn’t be surprised to see Kenma standing there with his usual tired expression. This time, however, there’s a twinkling of something in his eyes, and a bigger curve of his lips that send you wondering. “I wish you all the best,” he says softly, his eyes smiling at you, “have a memorable evening, okay?”

You find yourself mirroring his gentle smile and you reach out with a hand to hold onto his. “I will. Thank you, Kenma.”

“Here,” he gives your hand a small squeeze before pulling out a poorly hidden package from behind his body to place into your palm. “I think you’ll like it.”

“It’s not flowers,” you giggle, “I’ll most probably like it.”

Kenma doesn’t say anything else, his smile turning a soft shade of ambiguous. He’s about to turn to skate away, but before he does he catches Kuroo’s eye, and much to the latter’s surprise, he receives a very warm and encouraging smile. You’re not looking, but Kuroo definitely finds his breath hitching when he catches the mouthed ‘ _doing good_ ’ from his best friend.

You’ve only finished unwrapping your gift, but Kenma has already melted away into the crowd of couples, and Kuroo finds himself watching your every movement with worry and fascination in equal measure.

“It’s a cat,” you breathe, and indeed it is. A small, glass ornament of a black cat rests heavily in your palms, clutching a small puzzle piece to its chest. It’s gorgeous, if a little obvious, but Kuroo simply couldn’t help but like it immediately when he first saw it. When you look up at him, expectedly, Kuroo simply smiles and shakes his head yet again, and pulls you along.

 

* * *

 

The day’s adventure leads up to a finishing point at one of the places you’ve become so well acquainted with you can almost walk there in your sleep. The steps seem so incredibly familiar to you, as are the rusting, blue rungs that Kuroo climbs up after you to the rooftop. It’s just the right temperature, and the soft breeze isn’t strong enough to rustle your clothing, and you wait patiently for Kuroo to finish dusting off his hands.

“We’ll have to be back here tomorrow afternoon,” he comments with a wry grin. You simply smile and let a soft chuckle fall from your lips.

“I don’t mind. It’s a nice place, even if I do hear your coach shouting through the ceiling.”

“Yeah, he’s… vocal.”

“Well, I guess you can’t win intramurals if you’re not loud enough,” you tease, and Kuroo finds himself plopping himself down next to you with lighthearted ease.

He doesn’t say a word when you bring out the puzzle pieces from your pocket. With almost tranquil contentment he watches as you turn and flip them around in your fingers almost longingly before gently slipping them into place. It’s not difficult, it’s only four pieces after all, but the tension hovering around the two of you feels like a heavy blanket in a blustering winter.

“‘ _What is my favourite time of day?’_ ” you read the words on the completed puzzle. Kuroo is still sitting there with his arms folded calmly over his knees when you turn your searching stare onto him. “9pm, when you finally get to shower after practice?” You venture.

Kuroo bursts into laughter at your answer and you can’t help but let the trickle of laughter ripple across your face.

“Nope.”

“Hmm… 8am on the days I drop by and bring you my mom’s breakfast?”

“Now that you mention it, that’s probably one of my favourites.”

“5am? When the city lights start to turn off again?”

It’s not a bad guess, you knew him well and these were his favourite moments in the day, but he can hear the tinge of nervousness in your voice that wears at your usual patience, so Kuroo leans sideways into your space and takes pity on you.

“My favourite time of day is when I catch you smiling for the first time,” he confesses, his warm breath a whisper over your skin, and not only his cheeks are heating up from shyness, but he can see the blood rush to your face, and any teasing remark vanishes off the tip of your tongue. His gaze is molten, wavering and so sincere that it physically whisks the air from your lungs, and in that moment, you’re utterly helpless. “It’s cheesy, I know,” he admits, eyes still fixed on yours and not sounding apologetic at all, “but I wanted to tell you. It’s true.”

“I…” it wavers from you, and Kuroo smiles warmly, although with a hint of self consciousness. He’s allowed, he thinks, because this is possibly the scariest thing he’s ever had to do, not to mention the most romantic, and those two combined with his personality is only bound to reduce him to a shaky puddle.

“Will you go out with me? On a date?” He finally asks. The words curl around you like honey and an embrace, and Kuroo doesn’t move an inch from his position in front of you, so close you can almost push aside his bangs with a puff.

“Haven’t we already been on a date for the whole afternoon?” You finally find your voice again, still trembling but a sliver of laughter returning to it. “With bonus appearances from Kuroo’s gifts and friends?”

Kuroo can feel himself inflate like a hot air balloon, and he knows he’s so rubbish at being subtle that his face almost combusts on him. Still, a soft, embarrassed laugh escapes him and he slides a hand behind your neck and caresses it with wonder.

“Sorry, silly plots come as a package with Kuroo Tetsurou’s relationship plan.”

“They’re not silly,” he feels you breathe against his cheek, because that’s how close the two of you are, “it was really… romantic… actually.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He doesn’t wait for a reply, nor does he pull back to catch a glimpse of your expression. None of it matters, because you’re right in front of him, he’s holding you and you’re real, this is all real, and Kuroo happily settles for pulling you into him for a long, long kiss.


	41. Analysis: The Law of Attraction - my smol volley squad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In response to Aki’s previous ask, this is my small opinion/character analysis on what kind of person they’d fall for, how they would fall in love, and what kind of person would be best for my volley squad, based on what little i know about human beings and relationships in real life. Here goes!

**KUROO TETSUROU.**

How They Fall: We can all agree that Kuroo’s pretty adept at reading people, picking out their underbelly and prodding at the right places. But it might be because of that acute observation that he doesn’t really listen to his gut very much (when it comes to attraction, he cares about rationality less when it’s with friends- when he doesn’t have a motive or goal). I feel like Kuroo would be the type who thinks he knows what he wants and goes for it, but somehow it doesn’t really click until it’s too late that he’s missing something, or he made a mistake (usually about himself, not the other person), and then he’s in a pickle, because he also doesn’t seem like the type to be able to discard people easily because he’s decided in his mind that this person is someone he chose, and he should bear the consequences.

However, I think Kuroo would be the wary type. He might find himself attracted to people easily (probably because he seems such an easy-going/flexible person), but it’s just a small electric shock kind of feeling, or a ‘oh, wow, they’re cute’, and because he knows himself to some extent, he brushes a lot of these feelings away because he thinks that it might just be a false alarm. But that’s just for attraction. I think for someone like Kuroo to really fall in love with someone, he’s level headed enough for it to be a slow and deep process. They’re more than just a significant other, this is someone he’s trusted in, he believes to have his back. I think they’d start off as friends, then very good friends, and perhaps after some soul searching, they become actually intimate confidants and perhaps one day Kuroo will realize that the reason why he hasn’t particularly been interested in other people lately is because everything he needs, he already has fulfilled in this one friend, one person. Precisely because Kuroo doesn’t seem like a fickle person, to me, he would fit the slow to trust, yet incredibly trusting and loyal once he opens up to you.

Fall For: He’s confident, he’s capable, and he probably knows from observation how everyone sees him, especially girls, when he’s in his Captain role and smirking and probably giving some slight fanservice just because he can. Because of this, he might go for the beautiful, tall girl/guy with the gorgeous smile and the genuinely kind heart. He’s not the type to undervalue himself (he’s realistic, not insecure) and he honestly wants to spend his time with someone he finds he can’t look away from, and a good personality is always a must. He probably realized he had a crush on them after seeing them interact with others, or have his friends nudge him in class whispering how good they’d look together. Kuroo doesn’t seem like the type of person who’d go for a person because of status, he has to genuinely like them, and because he can be manipulative (when necessary), he probably values honesty and kindheartedness in others because he knows how ugly things can get if they’re both the same type of person.

Most Compatible: If given enough time for him to mature and understand his own preferences/the actual purpose and meaning of being in love with someone, he might be able to pick out the person that’s best for him instead of the person that gives him butterflies. Not to say that both can’t happen at the same time, but it’s definitely your own hormones/instincts acting against your understanding of yourself a lot of the time. The type of person that would bring the best out of Kuroo would honestly be someone like him at heart. I’ve noticed that despite his bravado and his image in the anime/manga, his best friend is still Kenma, someone who doesn’t seem like they’d fit with Kuroo. I think that inside, the inside that sometimes Kuroo misses being able to express, is his actual dorkiness. Someone who shares his interest, not only laughs at his lame jokes but actually makes their own lame jokes, someone who surprises him with different facets, someone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously and above all, is  _compassionate_ and not needlessly argumentative and arrogant, that kind of person he’d actually be able to stay with for the rest of his life. Someone he can truly be himself around, and even if himself changes, they’ll still understand, accept him, and be genuine. They don’t have to be the prettiest, in fact, they don’t have to be pretty at all. If Kuroo begins to understand how rare it is to actually find someone like this, I think nothing else would matter. Kuroo needs a home in someone, a partner in crime and a pillar.

 

 

**BOKUTO KOUTAROU.**

How They Fall: I actually have a hard time seeing Bokuto fall in love with someone who doesn’t truly fit him, however, that doesn’t mean that Bokuto isn’t the type to  _date_  people he doesn’t quite fit with. I don’t think this guy is capable of falling in love many times, not because he’s aloof or afraid, but for someone as warm and welcoming as Bokuto, it would take a lot for him to understand what love really feels like. For him, ‘going out’ with someone might be more than enough, because he’s having fun, he likes them, he’s enjoying their company, so that’s enough right? That’s what all couples do- hold hands, make out, go on dinner dates, etc. Of course, people in love do all these things too, but I don’t think it would occur to Bokuto that there’s  _more_  to this. He’s no stranger to pain, but perhaps the type of pain he’s used to is the shallow pinpricks of either rejection, or being broken up with, or people badmouthing him or even being cheated on, but perhaps not the pain of something like unrequited love, loss of a best friend, having to let someone go, etc. I fully believe that Bokuto has great potential for learning all those things and have them change him for the better, but the him right now doesn’t see the need to actually search deeper.

If Bokuto falls in love, and  _love_ , not fall in like, I think his heart will realize far earlier than his mind. He seems like the type to automatically gravitate to the person, to spend as much time as possible with them (even if the other person doesn’t want to!), and he’ll start to highly value their opinion and their view of him. Someone with monochrome owl horns for hair kind of gives away that Bokuto is not conventional, and does not bow to others, but for this person, he will. If it’s someone who fits him, he wouldn’t need to, but for the first time, he’ll realize that he  _wants_  to bend. They’ll definitely start off as friends, then become incredibly close, and I think for Bokuto to realize that they’re more than just ‘friends’ or a normal ‘significant other’, a painful wakeup call might be needed, someone who if they leave, he’ll feel like he’s missing something fundamental, and will do anything to get back.

Fall For: I honestly think he’ll fall for anyone who gets him. Bokuto falling seems like it’d be a quick thing, especially for a high school relationship, but I think that for someone so focused on volleyball, the other person would have to approach him first. He’d notice, I’m sure, but I think he’d only pay it attention if it were made very obvious, very persistent, and might pique his interest a little. Whoever Bokuto ends up attracted to is not going to be a normal person- in fact, they might even be really similar to him, because he’s the type to become very enthusiastic if someone share’s his point of view and think that they’re pretty cool to be around. Bonus points if they’re attractive, of course, but if they’re quirky and funny enough, that’s enough for him. This will be, above all, someone who makes time around them far different than time without them, someone with incredible character. Bokuto’s an all or nothing kind of guy, so no pity dating. That person has to earn his attention, and they’re going to have a pretty grand time.

Most Compatible: We all know what I think by now, and I’m not saying this because I ‘ship’ it, but because this is one of those few relationships where regardless of gender, is honestly the healthiest kind of couple for these two people. Akaashi Keiji’s personality fits Bokuto’s incredibly well. Like I said in my other post, they are opposites attract in the best way possible, because it’s not simply ‘attraction’, but compatibility. Someone calm and down to earth in behaviour is almost on the other end of the spectrum from Bokuto, who’s chirpy and excitable and doesn’t take things slow. In order for Bokuto to grow and become someone who is less extreme and more balanced (balanced is good, it means you’re more equipped to deal with different situations in life in a healthy way), he needs someone who grounds him. Whoever this is, they will truly be beautiful in his eyes, because of the way that they change how he sees the world, the way he seems to see more clearly with them around. He doesn’t feel burned out, he knows that there’s someone who’ll have his back if he goes too far. Why do I choose someone who’s opposite rather than simply balanced that Bokuto can copy? Because I think that Bokuto is, to some extent, proud of himself too. He can’t just sit there and be submissive, he wants action, he wants to  _help_ , and if he also makes his significant other’s life better because they bring the best out of each other that way, it’s a healthy, fulfilling relationship that doesn’t leave one person feeling like the benefactor and the other like they are in a more powerful position.

 

 

**AKAASHI KEIJI.**

How They Fall: Throughout the manga/anime, I noticed that I rarely see Akaashi attached to someone other than Bokuto, yet he is perfectly capable of making easy conversation with other people. This shouts to me that Akaashi doesn’t have difficulties socializing (which some people may think so because of his personality), he just doesn’t want to. So, when put in a romantic context, I think that Akaashi is the type of guy who chooses, and sticks with it absolutely. Come hell or high water, even if he realizes that he’s made a mistake, he’s the type to stick it out to the bitter end to see if it works, because he trusts in himself, because he doesn’t want to have wasted his time on someone he’s sure he saw some good in at the beginning. Perhaps slightly one-track-minded, but Akaashi would probably have no issues pinpointing his feelings either. He’s not the type to go ‘why is my heart going doki doki?’, he’s the type to sit and realize, when one day his face blushes harder than usual that ‘oh. I’m in love with this person.’ Perhaps this is just my judgement, but I think that he is a very good judge of character, and I believe in whatever Akaashi chooses because this boy doesn’t make decisions lightly.

You might ask  _how_ exactly, does he make his decisions then? I think he might have slight problems with opening himself up to someone, which means that by whatever category he deems fit, it’s going to take a while. Although he’s loyal, I don’t see him as the type to imprint. I think he needs to test the waters first, make sure this person is even worth his attention before he starts to think about developing it further. That might be why he seems a little icy at first- because honestly Akaashi is fine with or without a significant other. He’s perfectly capable of functioning by himself and his close friends, so for him to fall in love, it’s a pretty big thing. Trust is probably going to be incredibly slow to come (he’s had a lot of screen time, but how much do we, as viewers, really know about him?), and perhaps he might realize that he’s in love with someone yet have barely revealed much about himself to them. They probably won’t realize he’s in love with them, and he’ll have to say something obvious for them to find out.

Fall For: He might fall for someone like him at first. Someone who he’s comfortable being around, perhaps even slightly easier than volleyball players who are usually quite active, which means that Akaashi might need to try a bit harder. He’d go for the quiet, kind person who’s not afraid to speak their mind but doesn’t volunteer information and their time like they have a lot to spare. I think for someone who might end up exhausted by the end of the day from social interaction rather than physical exercise, this is the best way for him to prefer time with his significant other over any other activity, hence the ‘let’s be more’. I don’t think looks would matter much at all. Akaashi seems like the picky type when it comes to personality (not that he judges, but he has his preferences), so for him to find someone that fits his preferences, he’d probably treasure them a lot. I don’t know if this relationship is balanced, however, because Akaashi might fall into the pit of just ‘taking’, and doing what he finds comfortable. This isn’t because he’s not considerate, but I think because he might view his significant other as his safe place, or automatically as someone who ‘gets him’, he might forget sometimes that he still has to put effort into figuring out what the other person might like.

Most Compatible: Here we run into the same problem as Bokuto! I think someone who balances out Akaashi is the best for him. Not someone he can hide away from the world with, but someone who changes him, teaches him that maybe it’s not so bad to be in the world. Maybe he doesn’t have to find it so tiring, and that maybe it’s even a little fun. Bringing out the best in someone isn’t just making them comfortable, but making them better than the person they were before they met you. Someone honestly like Bokuto- a little quirky, not judgmental in any way, enthusiasm not depending on Akaashi, and just a sort of independence that allows him to have his own breathing space and choose to join in if he wants to. This person would be incredibly kind and gentle when need be, but also be strong-willed enough to drag this reluctant man out for activities and such. Someone who makes Akaashi give out of willingness, not out of obligation, someone with such natural charm and zero manipulative tendencies. As I said above, looks wouldn’t matter very much, but I think that it might speed up the process slightly.

 

 

**OIKAWA TOORU.**

How They Fall: This is probably the hardest thing to guess. Oikawa’s level of self-sabotage and denial sometimes makes me headdesk, but although I think he definitely plays volleyball genuinely, he’s probably the utter opposite when it comes to people. I think that he has very little trust in others. Maybe not because he’s been betrayed and battle worn, but perhaps because of all the expectations others have had for him as a kid, and then to find that even his good friends can’t even take the edge of his incredible stress- this might lead him to think that people aren’t that useful after all. Incredibly self-sufficient (not healthily, but he survives), Oikawa probably won’t realize he needs help more than he thinks he does. Even now in the anime/manga, he has an entire support system that he appreciates, sure, but I don’t think he knows exactly how poorly he’s going to do without them. This might be the same for his relationship. 

However he falls, it’s probably going to be in denial, if it’s actual love. It’s going to be a slow burn, because in my opinion, love involves being incredibly vulnerable at almost all times, and Oikawa probably will hate feeling like this the most. They will definitely be friends first, even if slightly unwillingly, because if he doesn’t trust this person, there’s no way that he’d let them in any further. Perhaps it might start off as someone who forcefully brings out the better side of him, and maybe Oikawa resists that because I don’t see him as the type who likes being told that maybe he doesn’t know what’s best for himself, but if it’s a good relationship, he’ll see the difference. If anything, Oikawa’s good at grudgingly admitting when something’s either good or bad for him. Although he might be in denial about his own feelings, he might not be when it comes to tangible results (e.g. his diet, or his mental health, etc.) This man is probably going to be an absolute pain when it comes to romance, and probably doesn’t really believe in it or only indulges in it for the fun factor, but I think there’s a lot to him that even he doesn’t realize.

Fall For: I honestly can’t see Oikawa taking romance very seriously. Instead of wanting to find a soulmate, he probably had a few attempts trying to find people that he actually liked, but after being disappointed several times, he goes for an entirely different group of people. Because in the anime/manga, he seemed so flippant about being dumped by his girlfriend, it seems that he doesn’t really care for her either, and the only iffy bit is the fact the he is the one who got dumped, or that he’s single now. With his tendencies to fluff his own feathers by flirting with his fangirls, I think Oikawa would jump at the chance to date a beautiful, popular person that has other people chasing after them already. It’s a little shitty, but he seems like the type to think ‘since I can’t really get into this ‘love’ thing, I’ll get the best alternative’, which is whatever strokes his own ego. I don’t really see him wasting his time on mean, manipulative people, but he probably doesn’t take much stock into personality, or overlooks many flaws he finds out later he can’t stand because if he doesn’t like them very much, all he needs to do is avoid them by playing volleyball. It doesn’t matter to him if they like him back, as long as they’re officially dating, he thinks he’s done his part at ‘living like a normal person’.

Most Compatible: I might be pissing some people off by saying this, but again, I’m not ‘shipping’, but using one of the existing relationships that Oikawa has canonically. I think that Iwaizumi, or someone with his personality, goes with Oikawa very well. Left as it is, a high-school, immature relationship, it would probably be destructive because of how many issues with communication they might have, but I think that someone grounded is essential for Oikawa’s flighty nature to calm the fuck down. Someone who does’t just leave him when he’s feeling insecure (hence taking it out on others or acting extra asshole-ly); someone who doesn’t give up. Oikawa needs that kind of security in his life, because everything else is so up in the air that it’s made him who he is. He doesn’t listen well, so someone strong needs to tell him what to do to take care of himself. Someone who doesn’t back down when they’re being bitched at, someone who doesn’t run away when inevitably Oikawa does something deliberately stupid to hurt them. In this case, looks really don’t matter. This person Oikawa will definitely allow into his life reluctantly, simply because they’re so different and it drags him out of his comfort zone, but life without them will definitely smack him in the face because of how much worse it is. Someone who worms their way into Oikawa’s river of denial until one day he absolutely can’t function without them anymore. Paired with some growing up, introspection and communication, I think that this kind of relationship will really allow both people to flourish and balance themselves out.


	42. Analysis: Angry Akaashi, Kuroo and Daichi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> can you please do a detailed description (just like those lengthy ones) of akaashi, kuroo, and daichi being angry. like how would they be, how would they affect those around them, and like how would they go about calming down. i love your analyses.  
> 

**AKAASHI KEIJI.**

This guy honestly looks like he’s lowkey mad all the time at something or other! I think, especially hanging around someone like Bokuto so often, he’s got quite the patience and doesn’t actually get angry very frequently. Akaashi seems like he has the patience of a saint, despite being at a solid 5/10 apathy scale most of the time, and because I also don’t think that he isn’t the type to actually not care (look at all the time he spends thinking about Bokuto and how to solve his problems, if he didn’t care, he wouldn’t even try), I think he’s the type to immediately go into problem solving mode instead of an emotional reaction mode. Therefore, I think that for him to get angry, you’d really have to bother him, or hurt someone that he cares about. He doesn’t seem like the type of person to get angry because he’s frustrated, or insulted.

His kind of rage probably doesn’t affect other people much. Akaashi doesn’t strike me as a person very comfortable with being vocal or obvious, so I think his anger would be the simmering rage, the kind of bunsen burner in the background that makes the atmosphere a little more stifling. People close to him might realize and give him his space to calm down or to solve the issue, but I don’t think that strangers or acquaintances would be able to tell the difference between his angry expression and his usual one. Whatever he feels, I get the feeling that he doesn’t really show it much. Furudate rarely draws a different expression on Keiji other than a poker face. Also,  _because_ his kind of anger probably isn’t impulsive, but incited, I don’t think he’d be able to calm down until whatever problem it is, is dealt with. If someone hurts his friends, he’d probably confront them. If someone directly sabotages him despite his continued disengagement, he’d permanently stop the problem. Perhaps at the start, it might take him a day or two to simmer down into a more rational thinking mode, but he strikes me as an awfully practical person. Also, you know what they say- it’s the quietest ones that you should watch out for.

 

 

**KUROO TETSUROU.**

Kuroo seems like the type to have an angel and devil on either shoulder. I don’t know exactly what proof I have of this because it’s just a feeling I get, but I think that he feels a lot more than he lets on, and struggles a lot more internally that he covers with his usual grin. In this case, if you get him angry, I think that he’d have an internal battle- he’d probably actually be a volcano at first, and he might even be so angry that he’s shaking, but there’ll always be the solid part of him that tells him to calm down, that he shouldn’t shout, that it won’t help anything, and that he needs to get to the root of the problem so that he isn’t so angry anymore. The image that pops into mind when I think of a Kuroo that’s just been poked into full anger is much like a balrog, if that makes sense. Still, I think that this guy has an impressive amount of control over himself and also a generally easy-going personality that he doesn’t let it take over his head. It’s probably a good day or two until he calms down but he’ll fall back into a more logical approach. Regardless of whether it’s a solvable issue or just someone pissing him off, he’ll probably talk it out with himself when he’s alone with some space to breathe. Unlike Akaashi, I think that if he just doesn’t like your personality, or if you do something he finds unacceptable or if you insult someone close to him/or even himself, just to be an actual asshole, he’d get angry. Kuroo probably has several layers of anger, and if you touch his friends he’d probably reach the highest. If you lay a finger on Kenma, he’d probably skewer you alive.

I think that, strangely enough, people won’t really be affected as much by his anger. Because it’s not rare like a unicorn, and it’s fairly obvious (probably from his expression and his body language even if he doesn’t say anything outright to anyone), I think that his team might be split. His closer friends might come and talk it out with him to comfort him or to calm him down because they know him well, and the ones he’s not as close with might give him some space out of respect rather than fear. ‘I don’t know how to deal with this correctly, so I’ll give you some space to figure it out yourself without me bothering you’, kind of distance. Like I said above, his calming down system is probably just some self-talk and his iron self control. He probably doesn’t want to calm down at all and bash whoever pissed him off, but he’ll probably just seethe in his own time and come back like nothing happened.

 

 

**SAWAMURA DAICHI.**

HAH. We all know what angry Daichi is like! Just get Kageyama and Hinata to fight and we see the legendary black face of Sawamura. Of course, I do think that although he’s stern and quite disciplined (read: doesn’t take shit), especially to the younger years, I don’t think we’ve quite seen him angry yet. It doesn’t seem to match his personality on the court, someone solid and doesn’t lose his cool no matter what, and always supports his team, if he’s the type to get angry at small things. I think he gets irritated a lot, but some of it’s fond, and kind of fatherly.

I don’t think he’d get angry at all if you insult him, or if there’s anything done against him. He might be unimpressed that someone’s so immature, and might tell them off or something, but other than that he’d probably brush it off or go and solve the problem without preamble. I think that in order to get him actually furious, you might have to seriously damage his team somehow. The way he acts he sees them all as family, and Daichi’s level of loyalty stems from building an actual team from scratch, failing and winning together. If you manage to piss him off, he’d probably actually go on a rampage. It might actually consume a lot of his time and thoughts, because he’s that angry, and there’d probably be no rest until someone pays. This is only the most extreme scenario, because I trust that Daichi is rational enough to maintain his various levels of irritation before actually reaching ‘anger’. Only results will be able to calm him down, I don’t think any amount of comfort or talking is going to help at all- he needs to visibly see someone make up for their transgressions, or have something fixed. His type of anger will probably affect a lot of people, not because it’s a very visible, explosive anger but because of the role he plays in his team and friend group. He’s the one they always rely on, who always seems to be 100% in charge of themselves, so if he loses his usual composure to an emotion, it’s probably going to have a huge effect. A lot of Karasuno might give him some distance simply because they don’t know what to do, and might be confused. His closer friends might approach him, but I don’t think it’ll do anything. His bullheadedness in volleyball is probably sourced from his own bullheadedness in his personality. 


	43. Analysis: University with mini volley squad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ohohoho! although this might venture into headcanon territory, i can’t speak for their interests, only what they’d probably be best at. so let’s give it a go!

**KUROO TETSUROU.**

Ah this guy, I honestly do agree that he’s probably an absolute nerd when it comes to things he likes. I mean, it is canon that he referenced, and in fact, memorized like the lunatic he is, the whole term for DHA (I mean, maybe it’s a normal thing but I don’t think as a very average human being I’d be able to unless I did it deliberately). Of course, just ‘cus he knows trivia might not be because he’s dedicated but just because, y’know, sometimes we know random trivia, but I think it’s something to go on. We don’t have much evidence for anything else anyway!

Honestly I think he’d be great at physics. I know the headcanon is that he’s a chemistry nerd, but I think that although chemistry is really solution and equation based, with a lot of calculating and determining chemical sequences (or something, I can’t remember, all I remember is people’s lives being ruined by organic chemistry classes), but physics is a much more clear cut and potentially theoretical science. Chemistry is very abstract, and I think with Kuroo’s ability to literally come up with lame-ass phrases that are very long and actually require a lot of creativity to invent, physics might be a more flexible science for him because you can literally wrap your mind around a single problem with a dozen different ways to solve them (if you’re good). Also, what I gathered from his play style, it’s not technical as in, put your arms at a 47% angle with the pressure of a gently tap dancing elephant, but it’s practical, it’s logical and it’s simple enough that Tsukishima can understand- heck, that  _we_  as readers understand without much preamble. And that teaching method works. So I think that a science that has a good blend of theory as well as technical mastery, physics would probably be his forte. Imagine, astrophysicist Kuroo Tetsurou, but then again, that might be Oikawa’s (headcanoned) field.

 

 

**OIKAWA TOORU.**

Speaking of Oikawa, although that it’s pretty much permanent headcanon that he likes space and aliens, factually, that all came from a single panel in chapter 67 that flashbacks to him as a child wearing an alien themed t-shirt. It’s cute! But I’m not sure that it’s enough for an actual character analysis to focus on.

Oikawa is clearly a genius. Sure, there’s the level of genius that instinctual like Kageyama with volleyball, but for someone like Oikawa to be so incredibly intuitive when it comes to other people and intelligent about a game he’s interested in (practicing is also a skill- there’s not going to be any improvement if you’re practicing  _wrong_ ). This amount of knowledge and ease of which he accesses it definitely ranks him in the upper percentile of mental agility. We all know that it’s mostly agreed on in psychology (other than solid numerical and logical intelligence like IQ tests), there are many forms of intelligence. Oikawa definitely has at least an intrapersonal level of intelligence, and also physical intelligence to some extent. Perhaps not genius level but you don’t have to be an IQ of 185 to be considered extremely above average- a 130 or so will already do that. Honestly, with his level of dedication and IQ, there’s almost no subject that he’d be bad at. I think that because of his tendencies to practice and watch and research from case studies (aka. watching matches over and over again into the late night), he’d be more interested in a research and analysis based subject that doesn’t require too much abstact-ness (like pure maths), something that comes naturally to him. Art and literature would probably not be something he’d be interested in or good at. I think that what Oikawa might enjoy the most and do best at would actually be pyschology, oddly enough. This might be a slightly biased point of view but from personal experience, finding someone who is so naturally observant, intuitive, and to some extent empathetic, it would honestly be the most natural thing for him to study other people. Although many people think that psychology isn’t a hard science, it’s not numbers but it is incredibly scientific (clinical psychology is literally one of the hardest things to get into). Besides, if Oikawa isn’t interested in psychology, there is always neuroscience.

 

 

**BOKUTO KOUTAROU.**

I honestly can see him as a professional volleyball player. However, that’s a career- he’s still gotta go through university (those scholarships he’d probably get with very little difficulty) so he must choose a major. Bokuto is a little more difficult to discern because all we see in canon is his attention to volleyball, and very little else outside of it. Almost in all the slides he’s playing, or he’s eating watermelon or meat, and there’s only five seconds in the anime where we see him in his school uniform. I’m basing this purely on his learning speed/ability as well as his work ethic and natural talent and picking things up. I recall somewhere that he’s… failing a class? But don’t quote me on that- that might be me conjuring up things, so I’m not going to take that into consideration in case it’s false.

However, what we do know, is that Bokuto is good at whatever he wants to be good at. Volleyball, of course, he has a natural ability in, but I think that if he chooses a subject he’s interested in, it’d work out well. Practically speaking, it can’t be something extremely time consuming like Medicine or Law, because volleyball practice for university level intramurals (I don’t claim to be a sports expert but people get scouted into national teams from those), I think they’d have to practice honestly extremely hard and very often. This would probably lead to a drop in grades because time-consuming courses definitely don’t let up on workload. Engineering, for example, would probably kill the guy. I think that something related to volleyball, because he has a such a one-track mind, might be of interest. Sports therapy, for example, or physical education. Or even in the future he might want to venture into physiotherapy or something- which does require medical courses but I mean, as a professional athlete your retirement age is extremely early and you’d have to find something else to do with the rest of your life. Something that he can apply to his passion, he’d probably excel in and naturally dedicate a lot of time into. Bokuto, in my opinion, has no issues with intelligence but probably has extremely selective learning preferences.

 

 

**AKAASHI KEIJI.**

It might be because of my terrible memory, but I honestly don’t know much about Keiji’s preferences or interests. I’m going to be extrapolating this purely from his personality and my own knowledge of university majors. He, as I mentioned before, seems to strike me as an extremely chill person. I, as a reader, know for sure that he loves his team (otherwise he wouldn’t put so much effort into such an excitable ace) but we don’t really hear about his love for volleyball. Is he passionate about it? Or is it just a thing that’s interesting to him and he kind of stuck around because he happened to be good at it and Bokuto was interesting/really needed him to function. I’m going to take it at face value, and say that he’s decently interested in volleyball, and he’s good at it, so he decided to stay. I think that’s quite some commitment that he’s taken on despite not having a burning love for a certain spot, because Fukurodani is definitely a volleyball powerhouse so they don’t take their practices easy. Imagine throwing so much time and effort into something that may or may not be your passion- that requires a lot of toughing through the bad times and choosing to stay loyal despite the ups and downs.

I think that Akaashi might just be a computer science kinda guy. Don’t let the common stereotype fool you (although… really, the labs were really dank during finals week), there are honestly a lot of extremely social and normal people that are interested in CSE. It’s a formulaic kind of subject, but at the same time it requires finesse, because you’re literally learning to create something out of nothing from several new languages you’ve learned from scratch. You can write messy code, and you can write extremely simple and elegant code. Akaashi strikes me as the type to actually enjoy the process of forming together pieces to create something. It’s an extremely soul-sucking subject, but I don’t think Akaashi will have any trouble with it because of his dedication. Another reason for CS, I’d say, is his strange split second calculation of Bokuto’s potential responses, and also his list of Bokuto’s #37 weaknesses. It’s… quite an interesting way of figuring out your best friend, and also a very interesting and mentally challenging way to come up with a decision when you’re a setter and you have literally half a second to make a choice. I think this proves that rather than instinct, he’s extremely capable of making well informed and analytical choices, so I think something equally analytical and logical would fit him best.


	44. Coaxing them back into bed with Kuroo, Tsukishima and Iwaizumi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> gwahhh i love your scenarios so much they're amazing !! could you do a scenario with kuroo, tsukki and iwai where their fem s/o is an insomniac? and whenever she can't sleep she does her own hobbies like baking or drawing or she just takes a walk outside etc and one night they stay over at the boys houses and they wake up to see her doing her own thing and try to coax her to go back to bed?  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: It slipped my mind while writing that they were only supposed to be visiting- I hope you don’t too much that they ended up living together, I’m sorry! Anyhow, this was an incredibly heartwarming prompt to write for, and I hope that you enjoy it, and thank you for your patience. :)_

At age twenty five,  **Kuroo**  is a far cry from just five, which was when he last believed in monsters underneath his bed. Or perhaps they’re still there, but he’s become far too old and too boring for them to find entertaining anymore, and they’ve moved on to people who sleep more, who have fewer nightmares, who can sleep fine alone.

He hears the noise from downstairs first. It’s a soft clang, but it’s enough to pull him out of half-awakeness and his fingers curl curiously around the edge of his pillow. She’s not there, and her space is cold and empty from the exposed bedsheet.

The clang comes again, followed with a very, very quiet curse that makes the edge of his lips curl with laughter at four in the morning. It’s no clawed thing, but his own little monster he relies on to comfort him each night in their multitudes of blankets at pillows that cradle them into mutual drowsiness. Her pills lie capped on her side of the bedside table, untouched and unmoved, and he knows that this must be a special night. The stars, maybe, or the autumn chill that treads it way softly through the corridors of their small house, trailing eagerly along the warm footsteps of whoever’s awake at this time of night.

Not for the first time, Kuroo regrets not wearing fluffy slippers with bears on them when his feet finally touch the ground. He swings himself off the edge gingerly, aware of how his head fogs with unfinished sleep and the way his muscles seem to creak at him, scolding him, potentially threatening to shut down completely if he doesn’t return this instant. He goes off hunting for slippers instead, and for you, even though he knows beyond familiarity where exactly he’d find those things.

There’s only one light turned on in the entire house, and he follows it like a moth follows the lantern glow, padding silently across the hardwood floors and a hand hovering over the wall to guide him through the shadows. There’s very little noise from his end after so many months of practice, and he smells it before he actually sees you, exactly where he’d expected you to be.

“I hope you realize that coffee is very different from warm milk,” he calls to you from his place by the doorframe, hips cocked and resting soundly against the cool metal. “Was it worth abandoning me in the middle of the night?”

He hasn’t really registered the coldness, but the warmth that brews in his abdomen that chases across his chest from the way your shoulders tremble from gentle laughter makes him forget that there’s temperature at all.

You turn around in your seat, a solid, fixed armchair, and you’ve to twist your body entirely with your folded legs aching a little from the stretch to catch the sight of your boyfriend lounging lazily by the door. It makes you grin, that he’d rather stand all the way over there and look cool rather than come and touch you, like he sounds like he wants to.

“Want a sip?” You slide him a cheeky grin, and he finds himself fighting the pull of the teasing tilt of your head.

“ _Some_  people like to sleep at four in the morning, night-owl.”

“Hoot hoot.” Your grin relaxes, and you pull your knees up and against your chest so that you’re comfortably turned towards Kuroo. The hunch of your shoulders keeps you warm from the chilly night, and in response, Kuroo’s smirk melts into a smile that glows just for you, his eyes softening and his fingers longing to reach for you. So he does, taking a step at a time until he can cradle your head against his abdomen, rubbing your shoulders with his large, permanently warm hands.

“I just had something on my mind,” you confess, and he knows that you’re offering an explanation for not taking your usual sleeping pills tonight, “I didn’t think that it’d take so long to write, I’m sorry.”

“Mmmmm, no problem,” he murmurs lowly into your hair, his tall frame pressed firmly around you and his face buried against the crown of your head. He feels infinitely more drowsy next to you already, even though he’s still standing, and his embrace starts to feel less like a hug and more like a cuddle. His fingers curl around your neck and you start to giggle into his neko-atsume shirt when he starts to, although he’d never admit it to anyone else, almost purr.

“Tetsu,” you whisper conspiratorially, “I’m not the bed.”

He shakes his head minutely against yours. “You’re better.”

“But I’m  _cold_.”

“Then come back to bed with me,” he hums into your ear, and you feel a flush of heat that warms you down to your toes. Your cheeks burn, but he’s too sleepy for you to make anything of it. Besides, it’s honestly your fault that you’ve got such terrible resistance against Kuroo. “I’ll warm you up.”

Your boyfriend’s already half asleep by the time you pry yourself out of his arms, laughing as quietly as you can at his ridiculous hair and his vacant expression. “Alright,” you press a slow, loving kiss against his chapped lips and give them a small flick of your tongue to tease him awake, “but c’mon, I can’t carry your dead weight up the stairs.”

“You calling me fat?”

“Tetsu, you’re six feet tall. Your bone structure weighs more than my whole body.”

_“Rude!”_

You gasp loudly. “I didn’t realize I was dating Tooru tonight!”

Kuroo only lifts his head and gives you a grin that leaves you with cavities and a crushing urge to burst out laughing.  _Full of shit,_  his face seems to say.“I’m so much hotter.”

“Only in the dark,” you giggle into the dip of his shoulder, and your heart squeezes in your chest, like the way Kuroo squeezes you, so very tightly in the sweetest revenge known to mankind.

It’s even darker when you reach out a finger to flick off the desk lamp, the rich orange glow extinguished in a single second into the intimate hushes of black. Your palm is cradled into his side as your guide, but it’s unnecessary- you stifle a soft cry when your world is turned upside down in a tick of a clock, and Kuroo has you in his sleepy arms, biceps flexing reluctantly to support your weight, heavy and wonderful against his chest.

“Don’t drop me,” you whisper, and in the darkness, you feel him nod into your cheek and you wonder why you’d ever thought to leave the bed with this drowsy, adorable,  _feline_  of a man who’d carry you all the way back across the house and hugging you to him all the while.

Kuroo slips you underneath the blankets, padding your right side with pillows before slipping in by your left. You see, the words get stuck somewhere behind his throat each time he tries to say it casually, to remind you of it whenever he can- and they fade away before he can dislodge them again. So he tries to become all the things he feels like he should say, but loses. He knows you’re not going to be able to sleep tonight, not with the way you’re already sliding yourself upright against the headboard, but it doesn’t matter.

He curls up into your side, burrowing his face in between a stray pillow and your shiba-inu pajama shirt, and he memorizes, lazily, the way your fingers card through his hair and the soft beating of your heart. He manages, in the end, an unhurried  _‘love you’_  slurred into the warmth of your hold before he quietly dozes back off.

 

* * *

 

When  **Tsukishima** ’s arm falls to the other side of the bed and meets nothing, he’s utterly unsurprised, even when half awake and relatively dead to the world. He himself isn’t a particularly deep sleeper and of all your friends he knows that if it’s anyone, it’d be him who understood your insomnia the most. He’s just as tired as you are most of the time, but somehow the bags underneath your eyes have simply become a part of you that he accepts for what it is. It simply makes him hold you closer on the rare nights that sleep manages to reach you before morning does.

It’s not tonight, however, and at three in the morning, the only things in the near vicinity that are awake are the university students several streets away holding their parties in their compact apartments. No birds to be found here, none that are still singing at night, and within minutes Tsukishima is already finding himself irritated at the headache that’s blooming from the unrelenting bass that shudders through the empty night. Carelessly, he slaps a hand onto the bedside table beside him in search of his glasses before wrapping a blanket around his neck and trudging off in search of the one thing that’d possibly soothe his nerves.

You’ve slipped away during the night countless times, as Tsukishima’s discovered from his usual restless patches of lucidity, but this is the first time he’s gone out to look for you. It’s a small apartment that you two share, with a soft, silvery carpet that muffles the thud-thud of his bare feet against the ground, but it’s dark and quiet enough that he struggles to locate you- the leftover chaos from his neighbours still ringing in his mind, conjuring up sounds that fade away with a little focus.

“Kei?” A voice calls his name from behind a corner, and Tsukishima has to gather his wits about him for a few seconds to realize that it’s just you, and nothing sinister materializing behind him. It irks him a little, actually, how startled he was. You only watch him with knowing eyes, the curiosity set behind, and let a small grin tick your cheek upwards. “It’s just me.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles to himself, “of course.”

You wrap a small hand around his wrist that’s far too thin for your liking and he allows himself to be pulled into the light, the two of you bracing yourselves against the chill of the metal window. The high rise buildings block out a lot of natural light, and what would be a breathtaking moon is hidden behind the edges of skyscrapers that only glint with reflected street lights. It doesn’t look too bad, your eyes adjusting to the dimness, but it does cast a shadow on both your faces that colour this exchange just a little more intimate.

“What are you doing up?” You ask him softly, your fingers still glancing over the ridges of his smooth palm. Tsukishima stares calmly into your face, expression open and a little amused by the question.

“Looking for the one who was up first, I believe.”

You chuckle lightly, letting it tumble out from your chest like marbles. “I mean, you don’t usually get out of bed.”

He just shrugs. “Maybe I finally miss you enough.”

“Then maybe I should start letting you sleep alone.”

“Don’t,” his mouth open in a sudden start; he knows you’re joking, but it must be the lighting because he finds himself being entirely serious tonight, “I wouldn’t have to miss you if you didn’t get up.”

Your gaze is tender and the curve of your lips fall into a remorseful line.

“Sorry.”

He catches your hand when it falls from his arm, and you’re tugged firmly into a gentle embrace that’s entirely out of character for your tall, stoic boyfriend. You make sure to press your face into the crevices underneath his chin, breathing in his late-night scent and you lean into the way his arms snake around your waist and your neck like they were meant to be there. His heart is loud, and his thoughts are leaking from his body.

“…Kei?”

“Hm?” It’s clear and delicate against your ear.

“Are you tired?”

“No,” he murmurs, and his fingers dance across the bare skin between your shirt and the hem of your pants, making you shudder into him, “just love you.”

There must be something special about this night, because your chest feels like it’s about to burst, and this to you is more dreamlike than anything you could have ever come up with in sleep.

He still hasn’t let you go, and you’re still slotted against him like yin and yang, but you can feel his breathing slow and the weight of his shoulders on yours grow. You didn’t want to go back to bed just yet, not tonight.

“Would you like to stay up with me?” You ask, almost a breath, almost a wish, and Tsukishima pulls his head up from its perch on your head and eyes you critically from behind reflected lenses.

“You don’t think you can fall back asleep tonight, can you?”

You shake your head in slow admittance.

“Alright,” he inhales deeply, preparing himself for an evening of activity and a morning of hell, “what’ve you got in mind?”

“Well, I was actually folding some paper cranes in the kitchen when you came looking for me-”

“- _really?_ ”

“Really,” you grin. “It’s therapeutic.”

 _Also pointless_ , Tsukishima’s shadowed expression reads very clearly, but he doesn’t say a word and you keep your laughter under wraps. He’s starting to question his decision, you knew, but the way he keeps you close to him is an insurance that he’d stay by your side this evening even if you asked him to garden together.

“…How many have you made?” He asks reluctantly.

“It’s the fourth night, so I’d say around 200?”

“Jesus,” he pulls a hand across his face and you start into a fit of giggles this time, “I’m going to miss class tomorrow because I’m folding cranes with my girlfriend at three in the morning. Seriously, won’t you come to bed?”

“But imagine how we’d be able to double the rate of production if we worked together!”

“Don’t try to win me over with statistics,” he tells you dryly, “I’m still not becoming a mindless cog of the industry.”

It’s too much of a temptation, and it’s a final attempt at coercion anyway when you stretch upwards onto your tiptoes and slide your lips across his in a slow, burning kiss. It takes a few seconds for Tsukishima to warm up into it, knowing full well your ploy, but it fades from both your minds when he curls his arms around you and pushes his nose further into your cheek to grab at your lower lip between his teeth. You let out a soft sigh of pleasure, and he swallows it right from your mouth in a smooth suck that drags your tongue along his in a slippery motion.

You somehow manage to break away for a quick gasp of breath, and you feel your heels trembling with effort and his breathing is as rough as he looks. “We’re still not folding cranes,” he rasps lowly, “but I’ve thought of something better to do that still involves warm sheets.”

You laugh at his insistence, head still a little dizzy from so much happiness in such a short period of time and there’s no protest that comes to mind when he starts to drag you by the waist back towards the bedroom.

“Are you still going to miss class?” You grin cheekily as Tsukishima tosses you onto the bed and begins to peel off his shirt. The smirk he sends you once he’s abandoned his glasses somewhere on the floor leaves you almost gasping.

“That depends,” he drawls, pressing you further against the mattress with each suggestive tilt of his neck, “how long do you think you can keep me occupied tonight?”

 

* * *

 

If there’s one thing good about this slightly out of the way residential area, it’s that it’s almost as silent as mountain peaks and the sky is almost as beautiful and clear as a stream in winter. Perhaps that’s the reason why  **Iwaizumi** , who’s usually an incredibly deep sleeper, finds himself blinking awake the last vestiges of a passing dream from his eyelids, fingers clenching and unclenching against cool sheets that betray their occupant’s absence. He’s suspected for a while, from the melatonin pills in the bathroom and the way your complexion seems a tone duller in the mornings that you’ve struggled with falling asleep, but he’s never quite realized how strange it can feel, to wake up alone in a bed meant for two.

You have your side perfectly folded up as to not let any air in that might wake him up, and Iwaizumi, not quite yet awake, finds himself gazing longingly at the empty space beside him, jaw lax and vision still blurry. This house isn’t huge, but it’s big enough that it has him wondering where you’d possibly be in the dark, and what would you be doing alone? His calves ache in protest, but he ignores it dutifully in preference for his search for you throughout the house.

It’s a lot brighter than he expected it to be, from the way the half-moon illuminates the pale wallpaper and reflects off the wooden surfaces he passes by, but there’s not a lick of brightness that could come from a lamp, or even a phone. Iwaizumi takes a moment to still and let his hearing catch any hint of where you’d be tucked away, but all he hears is the reliable chirping of crickets outside and the hooting of the barn owl that’s taken up residence two houses away in an old tree.

Then, he catches a slight scratch of something against cement, somewhere far away that he’s barely managed to notice, and without a moment’s hesitation Iwaizumi grabs the thickest thing he can find nearby and sets off out the front door.

He’s been up here before to do some repairs on the antenna, but at three in the morning it’s chilly even for him, and it leaves goosebumps trailing along his tanned skin and a shiver takes over at least twice. He supposes he should congratulate you for your creativity, but all it takes is a single glance at your silhouette and then up into the sky for a warm smile to break across his face. Of course. It was silly to think you’d be anywhere else.

“Do you come up here often?” He breaks the silence with a sudden question, and you start in your huddled position on the rooftop, butt scraping against the rough grain.

“ _Oh_ , Hajime, how are you so quiet for so much muscle?”

“I’m not a robot,” he replies smoothly, “my muscles don’t clang as they move.”

A small huff of laughter slips past your numb lips and you beckon with a small hand to have him take a place beside you. He crosses the distance with only two and a half steps, and he lets his long legs stretch out on either side of you as he makes himself comfortable wrapped around your back. You can’t help but lean into his unfailing warmth, the firmness of his chest a contrast against the woolly jumper he has on, but all the better. You snuggle backwards and allow your head to tip backwards into his waiting shoulder.

“Did I wake you up?” You wonder out loud, slightly worried that perhaps you had made too much of a commotion climbing out of bed, but Iwaizumi almost immediately soothes you with a soft press of his much warmer lips against your cheek. Blood rushes to the area that he’s touched, and your cheek burns with an ache to feel him kiss you again.

“No,” he says quietly in his low, gravelly tone, “maybe tonight’s just strange.”

“Yeah, you usually sleep like the dead.”

You don’t have to turn around to feel the stare that he levels you that’s several shades of unimpressed. “And you’re usually finding hiding places, it seems.”

“I’m not hiding,” you grin, and you poke a finger at his chin to tilt it upwards, “I’m in plain sight. Of everything.”

He hums quietly in assent behind you, and you feel it travel down your spine and through the way his hands grasp you tightly against him like a hot water bottle. The two of you share several minutes of silence just like that, pressed against each other for warmth and for comfort, leaning back to take in the brilliant echo of the milky way in the clustered skies. If not for the winds and the weather, you’d probably drag a mattress up here each night to lie down and pretend that you’re floating away from earth, immersing yourself amongst the stars and gazing down at the small spark that you call home from the heavens.

“Would you like me to build you a tent up here for you?” Iwaizumi whispers softly into your shared quiet, careful to only pull you out of your dream as gently as possible. He feels you shift against him, arms finally regaining some warmth against him and he begins to wish that he’d brought an extra layer for you if he’d known you’d only be wearing a thin jacket. His jacket, he smiles wryly.

“If you did,” you chuckle, “I’d probably never leave, and you’ve never find me again in bed.”

“Guess I lose against the stars, huh.”

This time you do turn around, torso twisting in his grip until you’re stretched out almost completely against him, chest against chest and your noses almost touching. There’s a bright glint of something in your eyes that takes Iwaizumi’s breath away in a swift moment. “What do you mean?” You murmur against his lips, and the coldness of the air forms visible puffs with your exhale. “You’re going to be up here with me.”

“What’s wrong with the bed?” He can’t help but grin.

“Nothing, just that there aren’t any galaxies in our room.”

“You’re enough galaxy for me,” his voice melts into something molten, something that pours right into your veins and sets them simmering in the background, “I’m just watching you watch the stars.”

“You’re missing out then,” you breathe huskily against him, eyes hooded and almost close enough to touch.

Iwaizumi lets you feel his smile against your lips. “I don’t think so.”

He doesn’t press any closer, and the tension that hangs between the two of you keeps your body taut as a bow, hands propping you up on either side of him. He’s so close, so very close, but all you indulge in is a happy smile that blooms on your face and makes his stomach flutter uncomfortably. Iwaizumi misses your heat the moment you pull back and settle yourself back into his arms.

“Stay with me,” he hears you murmur into the night, and his heart beats at every word, “everything’s brighter when you’re here.”

“You can wake me up next time,” he tells you, and you squeeze his fingers laced through yours. “I’ll make sure you wear enough clothes too.”

“It’s okay,” you laugh, exhilarated from something you can’t quite express in words, “I’ll try to take less time up here.” You tilt your head backwards all the way to glance at Iwaizumi upside down. Right now, he’s the man you catch only when you’re alone together, all soft and love and pressed against your shape. “Want to head back to bed now?”

“Five minutes,” he asks, and the surprise leaves you glowing, “just five more minutes.”


	45. Waking Kuroo under the sheets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Explicit content
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> can i get a nsfw lol 👀👀👀 female s/o waking kuroo up with a bj??? please and thank you!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Yeah I… no longer know how to write sexy. :D I need more practice ;_; I hope you like it anyway, even though I don’t know how to end a smut piece either! Wow, I’m really badly equipped for this._

This isn’t the first time that Kuroo’s had a wet dream. It’s an inconvenient truth that he’s come to terms with over the years, about having healthy, functioning hormones, but it strikes him a little odd even in sleep that he’s having one despite living a fully active sex life. Just last night, in fact, and all the nights before this past week.

 _She’s finally back_ , the thought swims up past the fog of his dizzying dream and it brings an unconscious smile to the edges of his lips and tickles the corners of his eyes.  _Two months, and she’s finally back_. He’ll tell her about it once he wakes up, that even in his dreams he’s been thinking of her. 

Well, in a way. The burn that diffuses from his pelvis, up his spine, and into his very fingers that have the clean, navy sheets scrunched up in them, begins to grow. It’s hotter, wetter, and although there’s no face to his sensations, he finds himself arching into the touch, hips tilted up embarrassingly so and he can’t help the whimper that escapes his lips when suddenly, it  _sucks_.

His entire body feels like it’s on fire, the ache is prodding at his senses, building and building into this relentless warmth and suction that doesn’t pause for a single second, but it’s not enough. It’s  _not enough_. Kuroo’s back is already arched, his lower body writhing against the slickness that seems to be deliberately withholding his climax from him and his mind nudges him awake to add more, to touch it, to complete the sensations with the harshness of his own palm. It doesn’t matter if it looks absolutely shameless; it’s too early for him to believe in anything right now except for how much he just  _needs to cum._

_“Mmmph!”_

That is definitely not what his dick should sound like, and that’s all his mind needs to tug Kuroo out of the half-awake, half-asleep daze he’s in, and for the first time in what feels like years, his eyes blink wide open with a pained wince at the bright sunlight that’s filtering through the slanted shades next to the bed. It only takes him another second to glance down at his hard-on, and a third for an uncontrollable thrust into the sight that bids him a good morning.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he groans through clenched teeth, and his hands are trembling a little at the surprise and the  _pleasure_ , and you grin. As much as you can anyway, with your mouth full of Kuroo, and your tongue slides across the underside of his hardness, dipping past each ridge of each vein, and you nudge your tongue against it to match his pulsing. Kuroo groans again, this time hoarser and shyer, but his fingers tighten around a lock of hair that he’s taken purchase of to keep himself grounded, to make sure you’re right where he wants you to be.

“G’morning,” you mumble around him, a bright curve to your eyes and you know that your nonchalance turns him on more than any bedroom eyes can. You dip further in, allowing your lips to slide against his base and hollow out your cheeks in a swift movement to pull back up to the top, releasing his tip with a wet ‘pop’. Your lips are incredibly moist by now, not from your own saliva but from the pre-come that leaks freely from his slit and you rub your lips over it in a gentle caress, flicking a tongue up to taste the saltiness that’s pooling in a soft, clear bead, and Kuroo just watches you like he’s starving.

“Y-yeah,” his voice sounds like it’s gone through the grater several times, and he releases one of his hands to run it through his chaotic, sweat slicked hair and he has to bite down on it when you decide to close your eyes and flick smooth circles around the underside of his head with the tip of your tongue. It rubs rough against his skin, but his erection twitches violently, and he’s beyond controlling himself right now. Not with this sight, not this early, and certainly not with your own fingers curled delicately around his bare thighs, tense and sensitive to any change in pressure. “Here I thought I was-”

“-dreaming?” You finish cheekily, and Kuroo wishes that he hadn’t said anything at all if it means you’d pull away to speak. He nods, reluctantly and more than a little dazed, and he heaves a sigh of relief when you let your head fall forwards again to take him back into your mouth. Kuroo’s aching, and almost on the verge of sobs from how long you’ve been teasing him for, so you do only what a decent person would do and wrap a hand around his shaft and rub it up and down to match with the pace of your mouth. He feels himself bump against the back of your throat, tight and slightly strangled from the force of your gag reflex that’s being held back with practice, and he knows it’s only going to take seconds. Seconds for you to swallow around him, the clench of your throat tightening around the head of his cock and your slick hands with your even slicker mouth flush against his throbbing hardness and  _god,_  he comes just like that, in harsh, heavy spurts down your throat while you keep your rhythm- up, down, slow, slow against him and you milk him for all he’s got until he’s softening in you.

“Fuck,” he says again, eyes squeezed shut and his bare chest heaving with exertion despite having moved not an inch, and you crawl up all six feet of him with his hand still tangled in your messy hair to press a soft kiss against his cheek.

“Fuck indeed,” you smile, laughter sparkling behind your eyes and Kuroo cracks open an eye of his own to watch how your face brightens with an early morning freshness. If he hadn’t just been treated to you between his legs, he’d honestly confess that this would be the look he loved on you the most. He’s too tired to snipe back with a snarky reply of his own, so he settles for tugging at your hair petulantly, and then tugging you into his sweaty arms.

“Morning,” he croaks back at you, and you’re reduced to more laughter when he just covers his eyes and groans into his arm. “You’re too much to handle sometimes.”

You shrug, pinching his nipple and he yelps in response before slapping you on the butt as retaliation. “I know,” you murmur, “that’s why I handle you instead.”

He doesn’t even have to look down to hear the eyebrow waggle in your sentence. So, he settles for a hearty laugh instead, and pulls you closer to him to rest his chin on your head.


	46. leave me on cloud eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hi! i love your blog so much ahh i cant wait to see more of ur writings! would you be able to do a scenario with tsukki (or maybe another character if u want as he alreayd has a soulmate au) where you see ur s/o in ur dreams? and they meet when they're rlly young in their dreams and stuff and they grow up as friends and then eventually love each othe etc but then she gets diagnosed with insomnia and he barely sees her nowadays and eventually he finds her irl? sorry if thats too descriptive! <33  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I give this to you many eons after you requested it, I’m so sorry. I hope you enjoy it, and it’s a whole 4k begging you for forgiveness. This was an interesting write, so thank you for waiting until you’re almost all white-haired. Eleven for Tsukishima’s number. :)_

**_ONE._ **

“Hello.”

He turns around in the empty basketball court- the sun is boring into his eyes but he doesn’t have to blink more than once to see who he’s talking to. Even though he can see everything clearly, the chalk marks on the green, scratchy ground, the bushes that have been left untrimmed since several week ago, she’s different. She’s firmer than everything else around him, and her colours are so vivid that he’s not sure he’s ever going to forget how that sweater looks on her. It’s green, far greener than the shrubbery around her.

“Hello,” he offers slowly. He doesn’t like talking to strangers much.

She doesn’t seem to mind it as much as he does. She’s not looking at him anymore, but to the left then to the right, examining their environment with an interesting sense of wonder.

“You like sports?”

Tsukishima stares, silently. She doesn’t seem to mind, and just shrugs.

“It’s a basketball court.”

“Yes,” he answers.

“There’s nobody here.”

“Yes.” He’s getting a little tired of repeating himself. It’s kind of given, isn’t it? They’re the only two people here, and one of them is wasting time pointing out the obvious. He’d be bored if this wasn’t so strange.

She looks at him now, and he notices that her eyes are very round. Very brown, too, even though her hair is a special shade of grey. She seems to know what he’s thinking, and she shrugs again, this time with a wide smile on her face.

“Genetics,” she says almost apologetically, and if he wasn’t who he is, he wouldn’t understand the word at all. “Low melanin in my hair, or that’s what my mom told me.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay.” She watches him for a little more and the silence is a muting presence. What Tsukishima feels like several hours later, she finally moves from her spot and turns around. “See you around,” she waves a hand at him, and walks out of the park.

Tsukishima’s still standing there after she’s gone, very confused and very unnerved. This was his safe place, the place where he could be alone and himself without anyone to bother him. Now there’s a girl who’s definitely not his creation just walking into his dream and he can’t help but sulk, because it’s soiled now.

No longer comfortable, he sighs, and wakes up instead.

****

**_TWO._ **

You’d think he’d be used to her by now. He isn’t. Far from it. There’s probably no way to get used to something so loud and cheerful in a world of quiet, no matter how many times it’s been.

How many months has it been, anyway?

“Aren’t you ever bored of this place? It’s always the basketball court.”

“No,” he answers bluntly, “it’s quiet here, and it’s too much of a hassle to change it.”

She sort of frowns at him, a disappointed furrow to her brows that looks far too old for her face. Her face that’s always wide and open, full of curiosity and shamelessness that Tsukishima disapproves of. “It won’t kill you to be a little more creative, Kei. You can do anything here!”

“Yeah,” he intones, “that’s why I can do exactly what I want. Which is to stay here. Alone.”

He grows a little more frustrated when she simply grins. “Go ahead and pretend I’m not here then. I don’t mind.”

“I  _can’t_.”

“Why not?” She spins around on her heels and twirls several loops. She loves it, she can’t do it in the real world.

Tsukishima clicks his tongue and snaps his book close. It lies on his lap and he considers throwing it at her head. “Because you’re too loud.”

“Then make more people,” she tells him right back, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world and she thought  _he_  was the intelligent one, “if everyone’s loud, then no-one’s loud, right?”

That logic shouldn’t work. But somehow Tsukishima finds his basketball court occupied by dozens of other kids in less than a minute. He takes in the squeaking of worn sneakers against the slip-resistant ground, the shouts of people jumping from space to space, and the echo of several bouncing basketballs in a very occupied court. She looks very pleased with herself, and a little smug.

“There,” she remarks with a flourish. She’s a lot closer to him now, almost in his personal space and Tsukishima has to fight the urge to stand up to match her height, “now you can be quiet, and pretend I’m not here.”

He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t tell her that instead of pretending that she’s not here, she can literally just  _not be here_ , but the words don’t come and he glances down at his book.

It works, he supposes, as he flips it back open to the page he’d dog-eared, and pretends that she’s not there.

****

**_THREE._ **

“I’m starting middle school soon,” she tells him one day when they’re sitting in a field. It’s her dream this time, and Tsukishima’s only there because she helped him once and he owed her. There are a lot of daisies, he notices. “Will you be lonely?”

“Why would I be lonely?” He asks without looking.

“There’ll be more homework. My mom always makes me finish my homework.”

He glances at her, face impassive and his nose twitching from all the pollen in the air. He thinks she looks disappointed. Maybe. He’s not quite sure, because he doesn’t look at her very often to know these things.

But there’s just something about the way her eyes fall that makes his head sore.

“Then you’ll be fine at school.”

“Are you that much older than me?”

“No,” he shrugs, his shoulders a little numb from propping himself up for so long, “I’m just a year ahead of you.”

“Oh.”

There’s a moment of silence where neither of them look at each other. It’s heavy, unlike all the silences that Tsukishima’s used to on his basketball court, and all of a sudden he misses it. The quiet of a busy place, instead of this quiet that rings in his ears.

She speaks, finally. Slowly, like she’s turning each word over with her tongue before they’re allowed out. “You sleep quite often for a middle schooler.”

“I finish my homework quickly.”

“Oh,” she says again. “Then I guess I’ll just have to finish quickly too.”

He looks at her this time, a little confused. “Why?”  _Finish at your own pace_ , he wants to tell her, but it sounds too kind in his head so it stays in the back of his throat where it belongs.

Her smile is a little sad when he stares into it. This he can recognize, because he sees it a lot on his brother, Akiteru’s, face too. It makes him feel awful whenever he sees it, so he turns his head away quickly.

“So I can spend more time in your basketball court, of course,” she answers like it’s the first truth of the universe that she’s uncovered. “You’re not going to wait for me to get here, so I’ll just have to keep up!”

Tsukishima feels uncomfortable when he hears that, and he rubs at his chest absentmindedly to get rid of the ache that’s hiding underneath.

****

**_FOUR._ **

She’s late. Tsukishima’s almost gone through a quarter of his book, and she still isn’t here. The basketball is empty this evening, or rather, he’s left it empty since she’d started showing up here less and less often. There’s not much point to making things noisy to block out noise that isn’t even here.

She said she’d be here though, so he keeps waiting, legs folded underneath him on the park bench and he tells himself that there wouldn’t be anything else he’d be doing anyway.

“Sorry!” Her loud voice calls from what sounds like underneath a muffled pillow, and he jerks upwards, slightly shocked.

Her sneakers are making the squeaky noise against the ground like his missing basketball players, and he can’t help but wince. She just grins and waves. “Had to finish algebra,” she makes a face at the word, and he smirks.

“Easy,” he says snidely. She’s unimpressed, however. Her hands drop to her hips.

“Not everyone’s as smart as you, Kei. I came here as quickly as I could, didn’t I?”

“How am I supposed to know?” He sounds haughty, but his fingers are already marking which page he’s on before closing his book shut.

“You do,” she answers grumpily.

He supposes he does, and feeling a little chastised, he keeps his mouth shut.

“Where do you live?” She asks, and he feels a little surprised because it’s never occurred to him before. That it would make any difference where they were in real life.

“Miyagi,” he tells her. He understands her, so she must be in Japan at least, right?

She nods, slowly, a finger tapping at her chin. “I’m in Tokyo.”

“Right.”

“Right,” she echoes him. Her eyes are fixed on him now, and he can feel it burning through his skin. It makes him feel like he needs to apologize for something that he hasn’t done. “Are you staying in Miyagi for high school?”

He nods, and her shoulders seem to sag. He doesn’t comment on that.

“You’re staying in Tokyo too, aren’t you?”

She opens her mouth to say something, but hesitates. He waits for her, unblinking, and she glances away with a soft cough. “I am now.”

Maybe her family had decided not to move, or something. It takes a few seconds for his curiousity to fade at her statement, because really, it’s none of his business.

****

**_FIVE._ **

It’s the week for regionals, and Tsukishima heaves a huge sigh of relief when he settles down into his spot on the ground. He hasn’t been back in the basketball court for a while now because he doesn’t want to see more people practicing with balls right after coming home from practice with balls. Too many balls, too many people. The hillside is just fine for him, even if it does smell a little like dirt.

He’s taken to dreaming about night time, too. Silence is a little harder to find, nowadays, so he takes it where he can get it, and the stars are a wonderful way for him to be alone.

There are only four more hours until he has to get up again for early morning practice, because he really needs to get his blocking down right in time for Shiratorizawa. The thought sends a tremor down his spine that makes him sit up a little straighter, and his hands clench without him knowing.

Yes, it’s a lot harder to relax lately.

Not to mention, there’s something missing it seems, but he can’t quite pinpoint what it is. He supposes that the mind’s not infallible, and he must have simply overlooked a detail somewhere in the environment. She’d notice, most likely, with her annoying perceptiveness.

Speaking of which, he hasn’t shown her this place yet. It’s not quite recent, several months or so, he’d say, since he’d chosen to come here instead, but she hasn’t dropped by at all.

He wonders if she’s on a sports team too, maybe that’s why she’s too busy to bother him anymore. Serves her right, he thinks.

When his alarm clock blares through his thoughts, it shakes the clouds in his sky and he snaps out of his dream with an angry grunt.

****

**_SIX._ **

“Hey,” he murmurs, and reaches out to tap her on the shoulder. It takes her a while to turn, but when she does, it’s with a smile.

“Hello, Kei,” and she sounds like the breeze, “it’s been a while.”

He just nods, like he always does. Her smile warms, because she understands. “How was nationals?” She asks, and he’s surprised.

“You followed it?”

Her laugh is tired, but cheeky. “Gotta do what I gotta do.”

Tsukishima sinks down onto the grass beside her. “I never told you I played volleyball.”

“I know,” she sighs dramatically, an arm swinging up to cover her eyes, “and after all these years too!” She doesn’t wait for him to respond to peek out from under her sleeve. “It was easy. I just had to listen to the sound of salt.”

“You’d reach the ocean,” he replies deadpan, and she laughs.

“That’s the Kei I know and love!”

They both hear it when she says it, but neither of them follow up. It hangs, spoken and lonely between them, and faster than a wish, it vanishes from view. He wants it back, but he doesn’t quite understand why, so he keeps his hand where it is. He hasn’t seen her in a long time, not since he’d shown her his new hideout for the first time, and after that, well. She looks different. A little darker around the eyes.

Still, he’s changed too. He can read her better now, and he’s stopped rubbing at his chest whenever that ache comes up. He just lets it simmer; it goes away on its own an hour or two after he wakes up.

“I’m graduating soon.”

“I know.” She sounds happy for him. “Are you excited?”

“To submerge myself further into academia? Hardly.”

“You’re the smart one,” she rolls her eyes at him, “if anyone’d be excited it’s you.”

“Genius,” he tells her plainly, “does not mean enthusiasm.”

She doesn’t remark at that, and only laughs that raucous laugh of hers. It sounds so out of place in the evergreen field of hers that she’s never left, and Tsukishima smiles.

“Where to?” She asks once she’s calmed down.

Tsukishima shakes his head. “Not sure yet. I’m waiting for the letters to come in.”

“I see,” she nods, and that’s that.

****

**_SEVEN._ **

His parents must have found him incredibly strange, as the moment he’d received his final acceptance letter, he’d said nothing to them except hold out the open page and muttered a ‘I’m going to sleep’ before trotting upstairs. He doesn’t know if they’d stared at each other, or laughed, or just shook their heads in dismay, but it didn’t matter, because he was asleep by then.

And here. Back by his hillside, an absence of cars betraying the obvious fact that this isn’t real, and all the summer, spring and winter constellations are cramped into one single sky- they’re waiting for something, just like he is.

They fade one by one, Cygnus, then Orion, as it becomes light in his mind. Conception of time has always been rather weak in his dreams, but Tsukishima feels the hours pass by like each huff of breath. He wagers it’s been almost five hours, a few more until he has to get up for practice again despite no longer being a regular on the team, and he pushes himself up to his feet.

He gives it ten more minutes, just ten.

When those ten minutes pass and she doesn’t come, he gets up from his bed and switches off his alarm.

****

**_EIGHT._ **

Sleep sounds like myth, like a blade of legend, only bestowed upon the truly worthy. Tsukishima feels incredibly unworthy, because he hasn’t slept in days. The empty mug looks happily back at him, the dregs of long finished coffee relaxing at the base and he actively wishes that he too, was an inanimate object without anything to worry about.

“ _Tsukki!_ ” A loud voice bellows at him from his doorway (how did he not notice it opening? What?) and he almost bursts into tears. Or rage. Tears of rage. It’s just his luck to have chosen the same university as the two horrors, typically known to man as Kuroo Tetsurou and Bokuto Koutarou. There’s Oikawa too, and Daichi, but they’re much more respectful of finals week, probably because they too, are most likely dying.

“What do you want?” He cries through the palms cupping his face, and the footsteps stop.

“He’s shouting,” Bokuto’s voice whispers. Poorly.

“He never shouts,” Kuroo agrees.

“ _I can hear you_ ,” Tsukishima snarls. It doesn’t deter them in the least, and the two terrors finally reach his slumped position over the dining table and drop something on his head. He fumbles at it clumsily, hand shaking from too many shots of expresso, and he finds several cans of red bull along with a massive packet of barbecue lays in a flimsy plastic bag. “Are you serious?” It sounds a little ridiculous even to him.

Bokuto, however, looks incredibly proud of himself. “Food and drink. Stay alive, my man.”

“Barbecue lays isn’t going to make up for my lack of vitamin D.” He regrets it immediately after saying it when Kuroo waggles his eyebrows and goes ‘ohohoho, he wants the D’ and Bokuto sniggers along obnoxiously.

“Don’t fourth years have finals too? Or do you get your grades because you piss people off so much they just want you gone?”

“The latter,” Kuroo supplies helpfully, and Tsukishima gives up. On social interaction. On exams. On  _everything_  because he’s starting to see monkeys in his apartment, and he’s pretty sure he hasn’t got enough bananas to entertain them with.

“Look,” Bokuto finally leans forward to clasp a manly hand on Tsukishima’s crumpled shoulders, “I know we got you red bull and all, but get some sleep, alright? At least a few hours. You’re gonna pass out before you actually get to the classroom at this rate.”

“Right,” Tsukishima mumbles in reply, and when they finally seem appeased enough to leave him to his textbooks again, he decides to do just that. The crappy, second hand mattress would feel heavenly if only he were conscious enough to feel himself hit it.

****

**_NINE._ **

“Hello,” he hears, and of course, it’s just his luck to continue hallucinating into his actual hallucinations. He’s actually rather proud of himself to have thought that whole sentence in this frame of mind.

“Hello?” The voice comes again, and Tsukishima turns around in the same field, weary from everything and just… the ache, it’s back, and it’s stopping him from saying anything clever.

“Hello,” he breathes in reply, and her face splits open in a painfully familiar smile.

“It’s been a really long time,” she admits, and he has to agree. “I thought you forgot about this place.”

“It’s never changed,” he points out, and she laughs. It’s a weak sounding thing, and Tsukishima intelligently thinks about the red bull on his table. “Are you tired from finals too?”

“Too,” she repeats, almost wistfully. He kneels down and places a hand on her shoulder just like Bokuto did for him.

“Are you alright?”

“I missed you,” she tells him, and it steals the breath from his lungs like a jewel thief. He meets her gaze for gaze, and he sees the small pools of light beginning to form in her eyes.

“You’re… crying.”

“And you’re terrible at this,” they’re tipping over, past her dark eyelashes and down her cheek. Tsukishima feels like she’s casting a spell over him, and he’s completely under. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”

“Well, I-” he’s stuck, and she’s right.

“Did you miss me too?”

His heart is in his throat, in her hands and in the way the daisies seem to flow in the wind. So, he confesses, because there’s no other option to begin with. “Yes.”

She’s crying harder. “Good,” and her face crumbles. He surges forward and catches her in his arms. He’s tired and comforting people really isn’t his strength, but he knows that no matter what, she’s more tired than he is. He wants to tell her that she’s thinner and that he’s worried, but he’s learned from a few seconds ago to be more tactful.

“I have to wake up soon,” she says. It surprises him that it isn’t something that he’s said.

“Me too,” he answers. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know,” she gives him a rueful smile, “the sleeping pills haven’t been working lately.”

“Insomnia?” And suddenly it all makes sense. He tightens his grip on her. “You went to see a professional, of course.”

“Of course,” she laughs, “and yeah. I’ll try.”

He can feel the caffeine tugging at the back of his senses, and he’s on borrowed time. She squirms a little in his hold and he loosens it a little, enough for him to place the back of his hand on her cheek. “I’ll wait.”

She’s disappearing as quickly as fast as he is, and this is the first time the world melts around him because he’s never wanted to stay in a dream so badly before, but he can’t feel her warmth around his.

It’s only a whisper in his consciousness, but he thinks he catches a cry of  _‘waseda’_ before the ugly bedroom light is glaring into his face and he has to blink several times for the headache to disappear.

He feels slightly more refreshed, or at least, less like the grim reaper, but his focus is completely gone after that.

****

**_TEN._ **

_This is not his style, this is not his style, this is so not his style_ , he chants over and over again in his head. It’s all so hideously cliché, the way he’s leaning against a wall near the front entrance. He’s even got the hood thing going on, no sunglasses, thank goodness, but his hands are shoved moodily into his pockets and he’s pretty sure he’s going to die a thousand deaths if someone he knows catches him like this.

“Hello,” he hears, and he feels like he’s already dying. She’s watching him with a healthy amount of amusement from his left side, and he feels his soul starting to evaporate from his pores.

“Hello,” he croaks.

“I knew you were smart,” she grins at him, and for the first time, she’s not any firmer nor brighter than the things around her. She’s as clear as the trees, as colourful as the little pebbles at her feet and Tsukishima ignores her insult and reaches out with a hand to touch her. She meets him halfway.

“You know,” he finally says as he unwraps himself from her tangled scarf, “you look less tired in real life.” He gestures at his eyes. “Aren’t as dark in the daylight.”

She shrugs and slides an arm around his before they start to walk towards somewhere, their paces matching. “Rotten luck, isn’t it?” She sighs. “Put me in a dream where I can look however I want to and I still can’t get rid of my eyebags.”

“It’s a defining feature,” he remarks, “I wouldn’t recognize you without them.”

She throws him a filthy look that he ignores, but not without a small grin that creeps stealthily up his face. “Where are we headed?” She asks instead.

“To a department store to get something to cover your eyebags.”

“…Are you serious?”

“No.” Oh, she’s not even looking at him now, and Tsukishima finally laughs. He takes great joy in being a piece of shit, and she’s absolutely no exception. Even though all she’s ever been to him is his exception. “Do you like ice cream?”

“In winter?”

“Yes,” he watches her carefully. Her face brightens and he feels the tension drain out of his back. Who knew that not-planning a not-date would be so difficult?

“It sounds perfect,” she beams.

He nods, and they keep walking.

****

**_ELEVEN._ **

“I thought you had insomnia,” he says dryly when she starts to spin around him on her heels, “how are you here almost every night?”

“Not letting me sleep now, are we? What an insufferable boyfriend.”

“I’m not stopping you from doing anything,” he shrugs and gestures at her magical pirouette, “as you can see.”

She smirks, because she knows exactly how much he hates it. She doesn’t blame him either, it’d make any person dizzy. Thankfully, just not her.

“You see, the good thing about insomnia,” she finally comes to a stop with a flourish and he rolls his eyes, “is that no matter how much caffeine you drink, it can’t make anything worse.”

“That’s like saying the good thing about falling is that you can’t die if you’re already dead.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” she snaps her fingers proudly at him. Honestly, he doesn’t know what on earth she’s got to be proud about, because she sounds slightly insane.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Well,” she leans into his space and he’s tempted to drag her down into his lips just for the heck of it. “Why don’t you wake up and I’ll tell you then?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s almost four in the morning. I’m not waking up for this.”

She shrugs, but there’s a small line of disappointment that draws across her shoulders. Tsukishima turns his head and pretends he doesn’t see it. Still, she doesn’t respond except for sliding into the space beside him on their bed of corn flowers and tucking herself underneath his arm. He’s still looking away, but he can’t help the way his body decides to wrap his arm around her frame, nor the way his body seems to curve into her like a magnet.

“You love me, don’t you?” It surprises him not because of how sudden it is, but how confident it sounds. She’s barely asking him, she’s dragging out from him. He’s helpless, and he’s never helpless, not even on the court.

“Yes,” he admits, helplessly.

He can feel her satisfied smile against his collarbone.

“I forgive you then.”

“What for?”

“Not waking up, of course.”

She’ll be the death of him one day, but not today. Today, he’s forgiven, and all is good.


	47. Yachi gets a boyfriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> can i please request a scenario where yachi gets a boyfriend and the volleyball team get all protective? thank you!!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: What is this even. How the heck did this get so long. I have no idea what happened here, Karasuno just showed up and literally ran this whole show by themselves- I hope you forgive me. Thanks for waiting so long, and I hope you enjoy!_

It’s been awhile since she’s been so eager to be anywhere at all. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping and honestly? Everything is great because Yachi feels like this is her first breath in a whole new world. Who knew that coffee dates could be so exciting? It was really nothing, she recalls bashfully as she involuntarily covers her cheeks with two palms, it’s not as if they were in a big city with exciting animal cafes or anything, but she can’t get over the soft trembling that courses through her limbs with each step- oh, how he had looked at her! For someone who’s surrounded by men all the time you’d think she’d be a little better with interacting with one, but he didn’t mind. He just smiled at her with those lovely dimples and half-moon eyes until she stopped stammering, and he even held out a fresh napkin for her to use when she’d inevitably spilled some cocoa powder all over her lap, and even then, Yachi’s not even embarrassed about her blunder because she’s too embarrassed about being on a  _date_. An actual date!

It’s getting a bit late, however, since she’d lost track of time so easily- but who could blame her? Even though the city center is a bit out of the way from her residential district, it was worth it. For the first time in her life, the couples that buzz around during dusk don’t seem to be so enviable anymore, their hands clasped tightly in each others’ don’t seem like fantasy, and the way they whisper into each others’ ears- well, she could do that anytime she liked, couldn’t she?

Still, Yachi Hitoka is still Yachi Hitoka, and her face reddens almost immediately after imagining herself doing something so bold in public. She guesses that her mom wouldn’t be so against if she found out- in fact, she’d probably be teased until next year, but it’s alright, this is beyond her comfort zone but what a wonderful place it is indeed.

Well, it would be, if it weren’t for her above average hearing and a little band of misfits that she calls Karasuno Volleyball Club, and if it were anyone else, anyone bolder, they might have actually called the police if they felt at least twelve different pairs of eyes fixed on her every moment. Now, she’s shy, but she’s not  _that_  shy.

They seem a little bit confused when she suddenly turns into a large bookstore that seems rather crowded for this time of day, but they follow her anyway, winding through the different shelves of fiction, boy’s love, ecchi manga… good lord, Yachi feels like this is an adventure all of its own, but this is the one place where they wouldn’t be bothered- where even shop attendants try to avoid bothering their customers. She stops in her tracks once she’s reached a relatively empty corner surrounded by handrawn pictures of bulging boobs everywhere and with her hands on her hips (she’s trying to not be so nervous, she really is) she spins around with her best impression of Kiyoko as possible.

“Guys, really?”

It was a good choice of words, because she thinks that ‘excuse me, but can you all please come out?’ might not work so effectively when it comes to telling people off. True to form, they slink out from behind the tentacle section one by one, each with varying degrees of guilt on their faces. Some with none at all-  _thank you_ , she thinks dryly at Nishinoya’s enthusiastic detective face.

“We must have been pretty annoying, I-I’m sorry-” Asahi speaks up first, his hands wringing in front of him, but he’s quickly cut off by Hinata’s excited cry.

“I didn’t get to see! Everyone was blocking the way, was he cute? Hitoka-chan, was he? Was he?!”

Kageyama’s arm materializes from behind a bookshelf and whacks the orange ball of energy on the head, and Yachi stammers because that’s got to hurt. Hinata ignores it however, a pouty ‘aw, that’s mean!’ slipping past his mouth before he’s shouting about something again. Still, it’s not as noisy as it could be, and Yachi’s eyes wander up to one of the more silent member of their band of misfits to find Ennoshita, to his credit, holding Tanaka and Noya back by the scruff of their shirts.

“Sorry,” he offers with an apologetic smile, but it looks a little too dark to be of any comfort to her. Yachi just nods quickly before his mood decides to change. She starts to feel a little sorry for the second years, but it doesn’t last too long when she takes a quick glance at her surroundings to remind herself of why exactly they were all there.

Narita, Kinoshita and Tsukishima hover around the edges, looking both awkward (or in Tsukishima’s case, long-suffering), but there’s no doubting the curious twinkle in their eyes that border on nosey. Her view of them is quickly blocked, however, by Suga’s slim frame suddenly appearing  _very_ close to her face. Yachi can’t help but jump back a little at the proximity, but she’s immediately trapped in her place by a pair of extremely concerned hands on her shoulders. There’s no escaping the silver-haired demon. Yachi thinks that he might do a better job of being a mother than her own mom, sometimes.

“We saw him, Hitoka-chan,” Suga says seriously, those large, auburn eyes boring into her soul like some sort of criminal investigator, “was he too close to you? He was smiling the whole time- how can anyone smile for so long? Are you sure he was nice to you?”

“Koushi,” Daichi’s sagely voice floats in from surprisingly near, “we weren’t even close enough to hear.”

“I  _knew_  we should have put a recording device on her,” Suga declares with a snap of his fingers, and Yachi’s face pales. She’s not quite sure if she should be upset that they’re considering it, or relieved that they haven’t already. Maybe this is stockholm syndrome from too much volleyball practice. “Isn’t that what I told you in the first place, Daichi?”

“I’d rather not get arrested for invasion of privacy,” comes Asahi’s nervous sounding voice- somehow Yachi can tell that it’s not because he’s been caught, but rather because he’s rather anxious at being in such a suggestive section of a bookstore. She catches Daichi nodding out of the corner of her eye. Suga, however, does not seem to waver.

“That’s only if we’re caught!” He leans in closer, and their foreheads are almost touching, Yachi feels the beads of sweat starting to roll unattractively down the side of her forehead. “Hitoka-chan, you know we’re just concerned, right? We want the best for you, and to think that we had overheard some first years talking about it instead of from you- we were devastated!”

Hardly, she thinks, because she can see the excitement brimming in the back of his stare and right now, Sugawara Koushi is having a whale of a time. Kageyama pipes up, much to her surprise, “it’s one of the popular kids. The one with the KAT-TUN hair- I can’t remember his name.”

“You did well, Kageyama-kun,” Daichi reaches over to pat the younger boy on the back and Kageyama looks strangely gratified. Hinata, however, looks extremely put out. “I tried to listen too!”

“How can anyone hear anything over the sound of you existing,” Tsukishima sneers from the back, and Yamaguchi throws him a horrified look.  _Not in front of Hitoka_ , he seems to hiss, but Tsukishima just throws her a considering glance and then shrugs.

Too indignant for works, Hinata starts squawking, and Noya ends up having to wrap a sturdy arm around his junior to keep his feet firmly on the ground. Surprisingly, neither Noya nor Tanaka has said anything yet, but there’s a terrible feeling that washes over Yachi that tells her that it’s not going to be over yet- once Ennoshita’s let go of them, she’s probably going to be followed around for  _days._

“Um, you all,” she finally chokes out, her voice a little too high out of nervousness and exasperation, “he’s… h-he’s just a first year like me, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t follow me around-”

“But how will we know?!” Suga demands, shaking her a little, “will you promise to update us? Tell us everything that happens??”

“Koushi,” Daichi cuts in again, and Suga releases his grip a little.

Yachi needs only to take a look around at the unrelenting faces of her team to know that their stubbornness didn’t just end at the court. She nods. Very, very reluctantly, but that’s more than enough. Everyone seems to sag with relief like their only daughter’s promised to save sex for  _after_ marriage, and Yachi sighs.

She prays quickly to Buddha and hopes that, at this rate, she’s still in a relationship by the end of the week.


	48. In which Oikawa is oblivious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> seijoh has a female manager, and she happens to be oikawa and iwa's long time childhood friend — she and oiks are completely oblivious to each other's feelings, like everyone in the team already knows except for them? hehe sorry if this is too specific!!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Oikawa? A lady killer? In his dreams, maybe, but when it comes to actual matters of the heart I promise that he’s a clueless amoeba. Cue, Iwaizumi to the rescue. I hope you enjoy this little fic of silly!_

Now Iwaizumi doesn’t think that he should be considered a very observant person. Sure, he picks up on things that he needs to, but he doesn’t have the persistence to be able to really uncover something that someone’s actively trying to hide. Which makes this all the more pathetic, in his opinion, because at this rate even a blind pigeon with a faulty sensory system would be able to notice the amount of tension in the air each time the two of them are in the same room.

Out of everyone too, they’d all banked on Oikawa being the perceptive one. Heck, his entire volleyball career is based on him being the most observant out of all of them- the one who picks up on playstyle, predictive movement and analysing potential plays. He literally does this  _every day_ , so why, why does this idiot not notice the incredibly suffocating atmosphere each time they finish practice?

Iwaizumi Hajime is no matchmaker. But sometimes enough is enough, and if this is what it takes to stop the betting pool from growing into unrealistic proportions (I mean, he’s a high schooler, he can’t afford a  _car_  for goodness’ sake), actions must be taken.

He starts with the small things. They’re in the same club, sure, but they’re in the same school too,  _and_  the same year. It shouldn’t be that difficult, he decides, even if both of them are blind as bats. Attempt one involves him really awkwardly standing in the middle of the corridor waiting for both of them to show up after school to  _shop for new trainers_. It’s possibly the world’s most cliché plot, but he’s getting points for effort, not originality. Both you and Oikawa look at his shoes with raised eyebrows and Iwaizumi sighs. Alright, they’re pretty new, but he supposes he can make a sacrifice for his best friends. His  _idiot_  best friends that give him so much grief about overspending on the way to the store that he wants to chuck them both in a trash compactor and be done with it.

It doesn’t work, of course. He just ends up with a frayed temper, two highly amused friends and an empty wallet. He swears never again to treat either of them to drinks, because a cappuccino should not cost more than a meal and be made with beans imported from Atlantis or somewhere.

His next attempt goes a little better, if a little less effective. They don’t actually manage to spend time together, but he manages to corner Oikawa in the locker room right after practice and squeezes some truth of out of him. Iwaizumi settles for 75% truth, because any higher and it’d be an impostor.

“Do you like her?” He asks a bewildered Oikawa, straight and to the point.

“Who?” The git tilts his head in feigned ignorance and Iwaizumi smacks him.

“Who else have you been staring at all the time with that pining expression on your face?”

“Iwa-chan, I don’t  _pine_ ,” Oikawa scrunches up his nose like the mere insinuation that he could have human feelings is beneath him, “I merely admire.”

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes. “Pine, admire, pop a boner for- it’s all the same. C’mon, the truth.”

Oikawa looks rather indignant at being put on the spot with his uniform pants safely out of reach and behind Iwaizumi, so it’s not like he can make a break for it. So, laboriously, he answers. “Is it that obvious?”

“Shittykawa, I’m pretty sure the school’s going to make banners out of your mooning faces if it gets any more obvious.”

Oikawa’s eyes widen. “So the team knows?!”

Iwaizumi snorts. “Of course the team knows. I’m pretty sure the only one who doesn’t know is her.”

“You’re not going to say anything are you?! Iwa-chan, don’t tell me you’re going to turn traitor.”

“Okay,” Iwaizumi frowns and presses an accusing finger into Oikawa’s heaving chest. “First of all, you’re both unfortunately my best friends and absolute morons, so there’s no ‘turning traitor’ when I’m on nobody’s side. Secondly, you should tell her before we all go broke from betting on you two.”

“What’s the betting pool at?” Oikawa seems to perk up at the idea, and a wicked smirk creeps over his expression. Iwaizumi feels like he’s signing himself away to a demon when he tells him.

“Around 17-k yen.”

Oikawa lets out a low whistle. “ _Wow_ , I’m flattered!”

“You shouldn’t be,” Iwaizumi mutters irritably, but he knows it’s not going to make a difference either way. “Hurry the fuck up and admit it.”

“Why? I’m going to make someone rich, y’know. So much money isn’t to be scoffed at as a student.”

“Yeah?” Iwaizumi’s quite done at this point. His point’s been made, and the idea’s been planted. There’s nothing left for him to do this evening, so he pulls back and starts packing his things into his bag. Oikawa just stands there with his back to the wall like he’s been pinned there by some invisible force of the universe. “Look,” Iwaizumi finally says, hefting his stuff over his shoulder with a hand on the doorknob, “sure, someone’s going to go rich, someone’s going to go broke- but you’re gonna be stuck here with those feelings of yours until someone graduates and you’re never going to be able to tell her how you feel. So, man up.”

He doesn’t glance backwards to see Oikawa’s expression before he leaves. He catches your eye outside in the hallway, waiting for both of them to walk home after school, and Iwaizumi lifts a hand in greeting.

 

* * *

 

The best news he’s heard all week, he thinks, is that he doesn’t need to make an attempt three. Honestly, there’s not much else he thinks he can do other than go to you and confront  _you_  about your feelings too (which, he thinks he should have done first because you’re miles easier to talk to than Oikawa), but all that is saved, thank goodness, when he receives a text at two thirty in the morning from Shittykawa telling him that he’s going to talk to her tomorrow at practice.

It’s the best sleep he’s had in ages, and he finds himself actually looking forwards to practice afterschool that day.

It’s a pretty average day- all three of your meet at the crossroads of your respective streets to head to school together. Oikawa’s got his arm around the both you and Iwaizumi, as usual, and there’s almost no difference from any other day- that is, if both of you hadn’t been around him since he was born. There’s no escaping the eyes of a hawk. You’re in a different class from both of them, but Iwaizumi notices the extra chirpy ‘see ya!’ that Oikawa offers you, and the little bashful smile that colours your cheeks before the two of you part to start the day. Iwaizumi does the decent thing, and doesn’t mention it at all. He doesn’t even look at Oikawa knowingly, which he thinks he deserved at least fifteen brownie points for.

The thing that gives it away for the team, however, is during practice. Oikawa’s as stern and serious as always whenever there’s volleyball involved, but this afternoon he barely spares you a glance, not even when you’re directly handing him his personal bottle that he’d forgotten at home this morning. Hanamaki only nudges Iwaizumi in the ribs rather painfully, and jerks his head towards the non-spectacle. Yahaba just scoffs at his wimp of a captain, and even Issei, usually the one who pretends he’s not interested in it out of respect for you, shakes his head disappointingly.

“That’s cold,” he murmurs to Iwaizumi, and Iwaizumi has to agree. “Is he planning on doing something today?”

“That’s what he messaged me,” Iwaizumi murmurs back, and Hanamaki makes a suffocating noise in the background.

“I knew our captain was a tsun,” Hanamaki comments, “but she’s too sweet to even notice that he is. She probably just thinks she’s done something to piss him off today.”

Even Kyoutani makes a disgusted face at the sound of that, and Iwaizumi, again, has to agree. “She knows him so well but when it comes to some things…”

“They deserve each other,” finishes Issei, and the whole team just nods in assent.

“The blind leading the blind- or something,” Yahaba just tuts as he waves the betting sheet around in the air, and they all gravitate towards him, eyes never leaving your slightly put off figure the entire time. Everyone holds their breath collectively when you make a move to return to the coach’s side, but Oikawa places a very shaky hand on your arm to stop you.

“Wait-“ he begins, and you find yourself heating up in ways you thought were only limited to industrial sized ovens.

“H-hm?” you stutter, and you look mildly frustrated at your own tongue for that. Oikawa, on the other hand, doesn’t notice it at all and instead pulls you to one side in what he thinks is an inconspicuous corner. The only people who don’t notice are the coach and the teacher, and the rest of Aoba Jousai watches on with baited breath.

“I,” Oikawa starts, before he removes his hand from you and starts to pull at his shirt nervously, “Iwa-chan told me something the other day.”

You nod, anticipating a story of some sort that ends with Oikawa being roasted,  _again_.

“He said that we’re going to graduate soon, and…” his tongue trips him over several times, and you feel your nerves run laps around your pulse. “That I should say something before I regret not… saying…”

“This isn’t like you, Tooru,” you joke, a small smile gracing your features because it’s the only way you know how to comfort him right now, “you’re usually so sure of anything you’re going to say.”

“Well that’s because usually I know exactly how it’s going to be received,” Oikawa responds proudly before deflating again. He’s blushing, which is a natural wonder in itself and you can’t help but mirror it four-fold. You’re too busy staring at the floor, but Oikawa catches the way your cheeks redden and your lower lip being worried between your teeth and he can’t help but resign himself to his fate.

That “I’m completely in love with you”- and he wants to die right there because that’s absolutely not what he wanted to say. It doesn’t sound cool  _at all_ , and the team sort of has a small stroke because they’d never expected their wuss of a captain to say something so bold. A stuttered, ambiguous confession perhaps, but not this.

Your face is like a fire alarm. You press your cheeks between your hands, hoping to cool them down, but no such luck- at least Oikawa looks absolutely mortified, which keeps your embarrassment company at least.

“I…” you’re flailing in your mind, “r-really?”

Oikawa looks horrified, but he nods anyway and despite all odds, despite the incredibly  _embarrassing_ , for the fourth time, atmosphere, a wide smile breaks through your face and there are almost relieved tears clinging at your lashes.

“Thank goodness!” You exclaim with relief, “I thought that I’d have to graduate without anyone ever knowing!”

“Knowing that… I like you?” Oikawa’s lower lip starts to tremble.

“No, idiot,” you grin at him, your own lips equally wobbly, and the two of you must make a ridiculous sight. “That I like you too.”

And then, Oikawa evaporates. Or rather, he feels like he’s about to, but what happens instead is that you’re tugging him into a fierce hug that he can’t do anything but reciprocate, and faintly out of his consciousness he hears clapping going on.

“Idiot,” you repeat into his chest, and he smiles too, because now that the embarrassment’s gone, he’s finally realizing what’s happening and good lord, he wishes he weren’t such an idiot, like you said, and did this earlier.

“I’m a handsome idiot, at least,” he tries to argue, but it’s all silenced when you pull him down by the towel around his neck and press a soft kiss against his lips that just won’t shut up. He does, finally, when he realizes that it’s okay to actually do this and not just fantasize about it, and his arms wrap around your waist to pull you in deeper into the best kiss of his life.

 

* * *

 

Iwaizumi feels exceptionally pleased that evening when he walks home, alone. He doesn’t even mind that its’ chilly and he forgot his jacket in the locker room, because he’d been far too pleased with the huge bulge in his wallet made from Hanamaki’s tears.

“I thought we were  _friends_ ,” Hanamaki had wailed at him, but Iwaizumi had only shrugged, and even Issei threw an unsympathetic stare at his best friend.

“Cold hard cash,” Iwaizumi had replied, before closing the door behind him and feeling like all his trouble had been well paid for.


	49. Kageyama's older sister comforts him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> i love u and ur writing. i was wondering if you'd do a scenario where kageyama has an older sister (by like 2 years) and they have parents that kinda ignore them so they only have each other to lean on. so when kags gets depressed one day, his sister is the one to comfort him? idk if that makes sense, but i really need a kags and sibling cute-angsty scenario :3  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I’m not sure if this is angsty enough, but it’s a strange mixture of something that I hope you’ll still enjoy anyway. Thanks for being so nice and thank you for sending in a request!_

It’s just a regular two-storey house in Miyagi, no different from its neighbours with a respectable driveway for their family car to park when it’s not in use. Then again, it’s rarely not in use, even if two of the family of four don’t yet have their license, nor the desire to drive.

They have a dull, white clock that hangs right next to the dining room in the hallway downstairs. It’s infuriatingly round and the numbers are a traditional Arial font, and it has no special function other than to tell the time with its three, black ticking hands. No dates, no chimes, just a tick-tick-ticking that echoes when the house is silent. However, despite its completely common appearance and function, this is the one item that she stares at the most in her spare time. Her smartphone- it’s a Samsung, her parents never skimp on important things- lies dark and unblinking at an odd angle on the sofa, and she’s sat upright, eyes never leaving the clock for a second. It’s nine thirty in the evening on a school day, and she goes to the same school so she would know that there’s no volleyball practice that evening.

She wonders if it’s the park, or maybe the hill for a jog, because he hasn’t brought his bike with him, or maybe he’s hanging out at that convenience store again after hours. She doesn’t send a text, however, and neither does she call. It’s nine-forty now, and she waits.

“I’m home,” her brother’s voice bounces in from the entrance, and her fingers relax a little from their iron grip around the edge of the sofa. She listens to him kick off his trainers and toss his bag onto the floor, and she’s right there ready for him when he turns to the left and into their living area. He doesn’t look the least surprised, but then again Kageyama Tobio really does look anything other than bored or irritated. Her face stretches into a relieved smile and she beckons him closer.

“Welcome back, Tobio. Long day?” She lets her gaze wander away from him as he sits down on the sofa beside her, sinking the soft material so that she tilts slightly to the right. He’s far taller than her already, even though she’s two years his senior, and it shows when he falls against her side and his head twists painfully to rest itself on her shoulder.

“Yeah,” he breathes, staring into space, “shit day.”

 _But you knew that already_ , stays unspoken in the gaps between them, and she squirms a little to reach her free hand out to ruffle his hair. Anyone else, and he’d swat it away, but she’s been doing it since he could remember, and on the worst days it was the only thing that could make him feel like he’s still safe.

“Mom’s out this evening.”

“What’s new?” He mutters, “dad’s either coming home tomorrow or the day after.”

“Day after,” she answers him apologetically, “he’s staying over for a long surgery.”

“Do you believe the shit you see on TV? The surgeon TV shows that I see you watching sometimes.”

“Oh,” she blinks, slightly surprised that Tobio would voluntarily pay attention to a modern piece of technology, “well, I don’t think so. I hope not, at least.”

There’s a moment of silence before he breaks it again. “Maybe it’s the nurse. It’s usually the nurse right?”

“ _Tobio_ ,” she says sternly, but it doesn’t deter him. It’s nothing new, nothing either of them haven’t thought before, and she was only halfheartedly rebuking him anyway. Enough so that they won’t feel like scum when they finally had to look their mother in the face. Kageyama just shrugs.

“It’s been a shit day. I’ll say whatever I like.”

She nods, slowly. She had those days too, and that was what she’s here for anyway. “What happened?”

“Well, no practice, for one.”

She nods again. As easily as Kageyama can be taken for either A, an asshole, or B, an innocent, she knows that it’s option C. Just a kid with problems who does his best to get by. Volleyball’s one of the biggest things that keep him sane, and as nutty as it sounds to her, someone who absolutely hates physical movement, the days where there isn’t a ball occupying him are the days where everything else does.

“Then coach Ukai said that I gotta pass all my exams to make it to spring training camp at Shinzen.”

“Tobi, you should be passing your exams  _anyway_.”

He rolls his eyes at her and she huffs a short breath of laughter at her impudent younger brother. “I can get scholarships- or something.”

“Yeah but you need to pass your exams to get to third year so you can actually apply for scholarships, you nitwit.”

Kageyama rolls out against her until his head is in her lap and his long, lanky legs draped over the curvy edge of the sofa. His eyes are closed, strands of hair starting to stick to his forehead from sweat on this humid day, and no air conditioning could stop his naturally insane metabolism. She hesitates, lip curling a little in disgust, before deciding to bite the bullet and run her fingers comfortingly through his hair.

“Wanna take them for me?”

“I have breasts,” she replies deadpan, “I can’t exactly walk in and pretend to be you.”

“Why not? I’m pretty too.”

“Kageyama Tobio,” she laughs out loud, “who have you been hanging out with lately?!”

He doesn’t quite ‘grin’, per se, but there’s a definite curve to his lips that are undeniably amused. He doesn’t answer her anyhow. “I’ll try. At least stupid Hinata is still stupid and we’re probably going to suffer together.”

“I believe in you,” she tells him, and she means it with all her heart. “You’ll scrape by somehow.”

“Wow, so supportive.”

“C’mon Tobi, we both know what you can and can’t do.”

The two siblings stare at each other challengingly for a long moment, before they both dissolve into exhausted giggles, because good lord, they’re such a disaster together. It’s already ten, and they both have to be up nice and early for another day of school tomorrow and neither of them have eaten yet, but the rumbling hunger of their stomachs don’t seem so important right now.

“Hey, sis,” she looks down in acknowledgement, and he’s looking at her with an open expression, “let me lie here for a bit more.”

She flicks his forehead, tutting at his lack of manners, but she can’t quite keep away the fondness that seeps into her gaze.

“Alright,” she says quietly, and Kageyama’s head falls back onto her lap, satisfied

Ten minutes later, they’re both slumped on the narrow sofa, softly snoring into the dimness of their living room. He’s turned so that he’s cradled against her stomach, and she still has her hand in his hair, a thumb rubbing silent comfort into his skin.


	50. Kuroo's surprised at his s/o's song choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> would you be able to do a scenario with kuroo where he finds out his small and shy and normally more introverted/quiet fem s/o listens to like red hot chilli peppers and radiohead and whatnot? hahahah and hes just like 'hey watr u listening to' and she gives him the earphone and hes juts like w h a t  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: For research purposes, this was my first time listening to Radiohead and I was very surprised when I thought I heard ‘I’m a creep, I’m a widow’ and suddenly this song was very sad and very ‘Woman in Black’. Then I realized I just have bad hearing. :D Anyway, story time’s over, and I hope you enjoy this scenario!_

“Are you… alright?” Kuroo can’t help but ask, and you tug on one of the earphones you have in as you two walk to get your mid-winter ice cream fix.

“Sorry, could you repeat that please?”

Kuroo isn’t watching you anymore, his gaze dropped to follow the earbud that’s now dangling from its wire by your side. You can’t help but poke an unassuming finger into his side, worried about the sudden silence your normally talkative boyfriend has fallen into. “Tetsurou?”

“Oh? Yeah,” he shakes his head a little like he’s clearing his mind and he stretches back up to stare at you with narrowed eyes, “you… listen to your music really loudly don’t you?”

“Well, I..” you flush, feeling like you’re caught in the act of doing something naughty- it wasn’t really that bad, you always tell yourself, but this isn’t the first time someone’s come up to you and asked to turn it down, especially in the library. Your mom hates it especially,  _’can you please protect your hearing? You’re young so you don’t know what it’s like, but I’m not going to pay for your hospital fees if you’re making yourself deaf!’_

“Uh, you still here?”

“Oh, yes,” you stammer, your blush burning up even brighter, “I… I enjoy being immersed, and… you know, feeling like I’m in the music or something…”

“Hmm.” Kuroo pauses in his tracks, his hands pulling out of his pockets to stop you with a hand on your shoulder. You stop, reluctantly, a few steps ahead of him and he clears those easily in a single stride. “Can I listen?” He reaches out curiously at the earbud that’s dangling and winks at you. “Not that I can’t hear a lot of it already from how loud you have your music.”

Your blush stretches down to your toes, and you nudge your fingers together nervously as you give him a timid nod.  _Oh God,_  this wasn’t going to go well, you squeeze your eyes shut and press play.

_You’re so fucking special…  
_ _But I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo…_

Are your eyes just shut or are there actually stars in the day because you can feel Kuroo tensing up beside you and he leans back after a few seconds, pulling the extremely loud earphone out of his ear. You crack an eye open achingly, and he’s right there with a hand on his hip and an incredulous stare directed only at you.

“I’m glad I pay attention in English,” he says slowly, “but these are some… really angry lyrics. Are you alright? Do you have anything you wanna talk about?”

“No! No,” you blurt out, hands waving wildly in the air, “I’m very, very fine, I just- it’s just been this type of music that I like and sometimes when it’s loud I can listen to the shouting and everything outside is quiet and-“

“Alright, alright,” Kuroo’s laughing at your panic, and the hand on your shoulder reaches up to stroke at your hair. “I got it, you’re fine, just… hardcore.” He winks at you cheekily, and you’re the colour of a fire hydrant. “I just never took you for the, y’know, angry, emo type. Not that there’s anything wrong with it!” He adds quickly, but he gestures at you broadly, “you’re just so… gentle?”

Your feet shift self-consciously and you mumble, “it’s always the quiet ones you have to look out for.”

Kuroo grins widely and lets go of you completely, and you’re embarrassed because he wasn’t supposed to hear that, and you must sound like a closet sadist or something.

“Well shit,” he takes another step back, “she likes listening to angry western songs and tells me to watch out- I really got myself into a pickle, eh?”

“I’m not a violent person!”

“It’s not very persuasive when you’re shouting, honey,” Kuroo looks like the cat who got the canary and anything you say in your flustered condition seems to only fuel him even more. “Do you secretly go to EXILE concerts without me knowing too? What about Asian Kung-Fu Generation? Do you listen to angry Japanese music too? Maybe you run a fanclub-  _oh_ , you’re probably one of those youth advocators who likes to stir up trouble on the internet-“

“ _Kuroo_!”

“My little, unassuming kitten,” he blows you a sloppy kiss and you’d stalk right over to that silly man if not for the fact that you’d be proving his point exactly, “who knew that you were a secret tiger cub?”

“I’m never letting you listen to my music again!” You cry, fingers trembling a little around your iPhone, and just because you absolutely can be petty, you spin around and keep walking. To hell with dating- you’re getting two extra scoops of ice cream because you deserve it from dating this buttface.

His footsteps are loud behind you, but that doesn’t stop your steps at all. He knows he’s going to catch up in just a few seconds, and when he does, he tries to turn you around with the gentlest touch of your elbow. You swing around almost like you’re being tugged in another direction, and Kuroo can’t help but feel a little guilty and a little bit drunk from how adorable you don’t know you look with that annoyed furrow of your eyebrows and the way your lower lip is stuck between your teeth. He reaches out to pinch your cheek, and before you can yelp with pain he dips down to give the area a soft kiss of apology.

“You can listen to whatever you like, I was just teasing.”

“You’re mean.”

“Mhmm,” he nods, nuzzling his face in your hair and pulling you to his chest, “I’m mean. And sorry. I won’t make fun of your music anymore, okay?”

He can feel your accusing glare all the way from down there. “Liar, you’re going to give me so much grief when it becomes relevant again.”

Kuroo grins and chuckles. “You know me too well. But I mean it, I don’t mind, and I won’t make you feel silly for it, alright? I’ll even buy you your ice cream. Extra scoop. With toppings.”

He valiantly stays silent when he feels you pinch his side viciously. But there’s a pause, and he waits for your mumble to become heard.

“Promise?”

“Promise,” he smiles, and when you finally push yourself off him with a slightly softer expression on your face, he reaches down to tug at your hand.

“C’mon then, tiger cub, let’s go get our asses frozen off.”

“ _Kuroo!_ ”

Kuroo breaks out into fresh cackles, and you’re tugged along behind his chirpy pace with a small grin on your face, knowing that at least, you’re getting those toppings.


	51. Oikawa arrives at Iwaizumi's wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> can i request scenario where oikawa is invited by iwaizumi to met his fiancée only for oikawa to discover that iwaizumi's fiancée is his ex-girlfriend (that he cheated on a moment of weakness back when they attend the same university) whom he still has moved on from but she already moved on and forgive him about ?  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Just to give a little context to the slightly different-than-expected approach I took with this request: it occurred to me whilst thinking about how to go about writing this that there’s got to be a reason why Oikawa didn’t know who Iwaizumi’s fiancee was before they got engaged, and a reason why Iwaizumi doesn’t know (or doesn’t tell) that it’s Oikawa’s ex-girlfriend he’s dating. Thus, this whole sad-fest was born. I hope you like it!_

On his deathbed, they’re going to ask him things. Like those goddamn Buzzfeed posts: ‘10 things people say they regret the most’, and he’s going to be able to provide all ten for the modest price of some procrastinating student’s attention. His life used to be okay, y’know? It used to have some sort of coherency, he was surrounded by friends, part of a great volleyball team, and the future was bright and blinding. What lay before him? There was Tokyo, international exchanges, professional volleyball, a career in physical therapy- he could be a pro, be a doctor, he could be whatever the fuck he wanted.

There’s nobody around to blame but himself. The apartment is as empty as his mind on the best of days, and even when he comes back home to turn on those fluorescent lights on his ceiling, there’s nobody to welcome him home, nobody for him to come home to. He doesn’t even have a dog, or a hamster, because he’d forget to feed it, or not walk it enough, and they’d probably die of loneliness or starvation, and Oikawa really doesn’t want to get arrested quite yet. At least, that’s what he tells himself, but the truth is that he doesn’t want to have to disappoint something else again. Someone else again.

It’s not often that he thinks about his younger years. Most of the time it’s crammed with the day’s work, the mounds of paperwork he still has to get through for the case he was assigned; another rich man, another lawsuit, they’re all the same. Mergers bring in money, but what giveth also taketh, and the idea of having a life or talking to someone about something other than work feels like someone else’s memories. Tonight is the first night that he’s not in his apartment or his office, but the tux seems alien on him and he picks at the sleeves uncomfortably. The clothes that Attorney Oikawa Tooru wears to work cost three times the provided clothes for the groomsmen at this wedding, and he’s changed so, that he’d find wearing something under a thousand dollars to be lacking.

“It’s been a while, Tooru!” Comes a voice, and he’s lost the last time someone called him by his given name. He turns around all the same, just in time to see a face he ought to recognize- he does, he really does, but you can’t blame him for needing a few seconds right? “Looking pretty fresh in that suit!”

“Well,” Tooru shrugs with an easy smile, “Iwaizumi does have decent taste.”

“Iwaizumi?”

“Yeah, the groom?” He raises an eyebrow, “Makki, don’t tell me you’ve no idea why you’re here.”

“I do, I do,” the man sounds so confused that Oikawa starts to doubt his own presence, “but if I’m still Makki… I think you haven’t called Hajime,  _‘Iwaizumi’_ , since you were six.”

Oikawa blinks, and realizes that he’s right. They say that old habits die hard, and he’s given this habit several years of absence to forget it ever existed. “I… Well, I don’t want to embarrass him on his wedding day.”

“True,” Makki seems mollified, and Tooru relaxes, “but man, it’s sure gonna be weird not seeing the two of you bickering over something like an old married couple anymore.”

“That’s how marriage works, right?” Tooru laughs lightly, “getting something real and all, instead of screwing about with your old friends.”

“Maybe,” Makki says ambiguously, and the glint in his eye isn’t at all comfortable. Tooru finds himself sweating a little onto his average-priced collar and he has to reach up with a handkerchief to wipe it off. He doesn’t say a word when Makki’s mouth drops open in dull surprise at the action. “Really? A handkerchief? What happened to the days of sweating through your bib?”

“People change, Makki,” Tooru answers smoothly, but he knows that if anyone’s changed, it’s him. It’s been years and he still can’t decide if it was for the better or worse, all that he knows is that his parents look delighted when they receive parts of his salary in the mail, because their son is finally successful and independent.

Makki walks away without another word, and Tooru hopes that he doesn’t bump into him again tonight. It’s going to be a long evening.

He can’t say that he wasn’t surprised either, when he received the wedding invitation in the mail. Part of him hadn’t thought about Iwaizumi in over a year, and he’d moved recently so there were very few people who knew his address, his renovator included. Must’ve found his parents and asked them, he surmised, and he wonders when the last time he’d seen Iwaizumi’s parents was. Four, five years ago. He isn’t sure, he doesn’t have many memories of university in Tokyo, it just lit up in a haze of crazed self-reinvention and the occasional girlfriend that made the days start to feel like time passing.

Maybe, he thinks as he takes a third sip from his champagne flute, if he hadn’t made the choices he had, he’d be the one getting married today. Just like Iwaizumi and volleyball, Tooru doesn’t let himself think about that too often either.

“Oikawa,” the man of the hour wades his way through the sea of relatives and comes to hover in front of the frail-looking, rich man nursing alcohol in both hands. Tooru has to look up from his slouch to be greeted with an eyeful of Iwaizumi at his finest.

“You haven’t changed much,” is the first thing that comes out of his mouth, and he wants to slap himself. Iwaizumi only raises an eyebrow- a firm, unforgiving eyebrow like all those years before- and gestures for him to continue. Oikawa does, weakly. “You uh, still got the hair and everything. Your face still looks like it’s taking a dump.”

“Nice to see you too,” Iwaizumi replies dryly, but there’s an unmistakable tinge of relief to the way his eyes crinkle. “Once Shittykawa, always Shittykawa, I see.”

Tooru laughs, because he didn’t realize he could miss a terrible nickname the way he does right now. “No, people just call me ‘Partner’ now. It means the same thing.”

“Hm,” and Oikawa can tell that either it’s a sore subject for Iwaizumi, or he’s stopped caring about Tooru’s life years ago. “Have you met my fiancee yet? I don’t think I’ve introduced you.”

“No, but it’d be a pleasure, I’m sure.”

Iwaizumi looks at him and Tooru is fully aware that nothing polite he says, he means. Neither of them say anything, and Iwaizumi simply gestures over to someone that’s being swarmed by the crowd, and Oikawa watches as a swath of beautiful fabric seems to shimmy its way over to them both by the open bar.

“This is Oikawa, the childhood setter I talked to you about,” Iwaizumi attempts at a poor introduction, and his fiancee just nods. “I’ll leave you two to it, your mother looks like she could do with some help.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs quietly, and Iwaizumi spins around on his heels and disappears like all his hulking muscle’s just melted away. Now it’s just Oikawa, and the fiancee.

Correction, it’s just Oikawa and one of his nightmares that’s beaten him to the finish line.

“Hello Tooru,” she smiles at him, and he swears it’s exactly the same one two years ago, “fancy meeting you here.”

“Indeed,” he swallows, his throat dryer than ever from two confrontations in a row. Three, counting Makki, and this is possibly the worst decision he’s ever made in his life, even if there is an open bar and unlimited mojitos. “So you’re the infamous fiancee, huh?”

“Infamous? Why, what have they been telling you?” She’s smiling again, and he wants to throw a wad of hundred dollar bills in her face just to get her to stop. “But now that you’ve met me, I’m sure you’ve got your own stories.”

“Look at you, talking like you’re not a part of it too,” Oikawa retaliates with a smile of his own, “so, does Iwaizumi know?”

“Know what?” She answers him promptly, “that I’ve dated before? That I’ve had a terrible breakup and that it took me months to leave my apartment again because it was the first time I’ve been dumped through a text?”

Tooru winces. “It was finals week. Not my best moment, I know-”

“-I know,” she interrupts, and she looks angelic with that lilac gown and a peaceful expression on her face. He’s been too busy staring into his drink that he doesn’t even know if her face changed at all during his rant. “I’ve forgiven you for it a long time ago. It’s just nice to see you again, Tooru, I thought you’d vanished off the face of the Earth after graduation.”

He might as well have. He’s more familiar with the office toilets than his own at home, and he’s even moved in a memory foam cover for his chair just to help with the nights he spends at his desk. But it’s not his job that makes him feel like crushing something under his feet. It’s how happy she looks, and how miserable he is, because he’s a stupid fucking idiot and that single text he’d sent her two years ago still comes back to haunt him on the nights that he lets his stress get to him.

However, the real punchline is that breaking up was the most decent thing he’d ever done for her. It’s been three years, and he still hasn’t told her because he’s a goddamn coward and this whole affair, this damn stupid wedding feels like his judgement has finally come at the pearly gates.

“I cheated on you.” He blurts that out like he’s struggling for breath underwater, and he regrets it the moment it leaves his lips. If he’s being weighed on Anubis’ scales, his heart is going to be tipping the whole damn set over with the weight of his sins. St. Pete would find him so very, very lacking.

Her eyes widen, just a little, but enough to let Oikawa know that whatever the truth is, it can’t hurt her anymore. In fact, her smile doesn’t slip from her face, it only falters a little with surprise (and a screaming part of him is disappointed that it’s not disappointment) and her perfectly arched, lace-covered shoulders shrug with all the carelessness in the world.

“Well, that’s certainly something new,” her eyes bore into him and he feels like he should follow it up with something. Anything. Who it was, maybe, what he was thinking, how long it had been going on for- but nothing comes to mind, and she doesn’t ask. In fact, she’s not even  _interested_ , and Tooru feels like he’s nothing in this vast universe. “I didn’t expect the past to be brought up on my wedding day most certainly, but I’m here now with a good man, so I guess I should be thanking you, shouldn’t I?”

 _Save me_ , he yells, but it’s too soundproof in his head for her to hear him.

“Probably,” he smiles weakly, his eyes curving in the only way he knows because it’s been practiced on clients time and time again. It works on her, because he can tell she doesn’t want to be any closer to him than the people who pay his bills. It’s a been there, done that kind of scenario, and there’s nothing in it for her. She’s here to get married, he’s invited here to see them get married- the two people he’d killed of in his mind back to haunt him- and nobody’s going to save him tonight.

“I hope you like the champagne,” he watches her glossy lips form the words, “it’s quite fragrant; I remember you liked the taste of floral.”

Like the eau de toilette she used to wear on friday nights at the movies with him.

“It’s wonderful,” he says.

“That’s good to hear. Have a good night, Tooru, and thank you for coming.”

There’s too many people in the venue to even see the bride and groom once they’ve gone. Nobody bothers the tired, suited man spending far too much time on a barstool, and Tooru orders his third martini. He doesn’t hear from Makki anymore either, and it doesn’t seem like Yahaba or Issei noticed the man in the inconspicuous corner. He supposes he should be thankful that he still remembers their names.

He leaves before the ceremony begins.

He takes the memory of her in her beautiful ombre gown with him home that evening, in his cheap suit, and a glass of whiskey and melting ice.


	52. Soulmates AU: red string with Iwaizumi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> can you write soulmates au with the matching tattoo? if yes then can you write a scenario where iwaizumi and reader-chan are best friends, knowing each other since they were childrens and our quiet and introverted reader slowly falls in love with him, but they aren't soulmates. and she doesn't believe in soulmates or true love, because of her parents. and iwaizumi secretly falling in love with her but he found his soulmate (sorry for being specific)  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Iwaizumi’s such a cool cucumber all the time even though he’s like, perpetually fiery, so I just gotta make him stumble at something in life. This is 7k of undiluted shame and rambling, but I hope you like it. :) Thank you for waiting!_
> 
> _[Edit: I am SO SORRY that I completely forgot that it was supposed to be a matching tattoo instead of just a soulmates thing. I am an idiot. Tell me if you’d like to read what you actually asked for and I’ll write a drabble to make it up to you.]_

_You spoke in a voice  
_ _like pure-white porcelain… the smell of winter.  
_ _Within my heart, a silently raging storm  
_ _rose up, along this darkened path.  
_ _Then twinkling stars fell down from overhead…  
_ _So immersed in them,  
_ _I was nearly brought to tears.  
_ _\- orion, Yonezu Kenshi_

 

* * *

 

 

In a world where everyone wants to know who they’re made for, or who’s made for them, you’re an odd specimen. There’s sexual orientation, and then there’s  _sexual orientation_ , and yours is ‘realist’. Your mother never lets up for a single day, telling you that it would be lovely if a girl your age would bring a nice young man home for dinner once in a while- and it’s okay if it’s a girl! It makes you feel a little sorry about your state of affairs each time, and it stings your eyes when you have to tell her that you don’t want to rush things, despite the world’s certainty of its affairs.

She understands, and there’s a soft sadness in her eyes that makes you rush in and hug her until she forgets all about soulmates, or the emptiness of your fingers.

“Your father and I were a terrible match,” she used to tell you each night if you asked about the little red thread tied around your pinkie, and why hers is broken. “I mean, we gave it a go-” and then she’d look at you and press a wet kiss against your forehead, “-that’s how we had you, my little gem, but it was never for us.”

“Why is it broken?” You’d still persist underneath the covers, and she’d sigh a long, weary sigh.

“Because we broke it. And then I found your stepfather, and here we are.” She’d look at you with that longing, hopeful expression on her face, and you’d stare right back with the wide eyes of a child listening to a fantasy story. “You’re happy, aren’t you?” She asked this every night before she left your bedroom, and each night you’d tell her the same thing.

“I’m happy, mummy.” You’d reply, and she’d start to smile with a loud sniffle. Then that was it, each night, you’d be tucked into bed without further ado and you’d drift off into dreams about finding your own prince charming, just like your mom had.

Then, a few years later when you were all grown up and being led by the hand to your third year of primary school, people started making fun of you. You didn’t notice all that much, because it was a terrible year and you don’t even remember spending it anywhere with anyone. Young children, including you, didn’t understand exactly what having a soulmate meant, only that everyone had it, and it was a funny game to see who could follow their line the fastest- you got bonus points if you were skipping class for it. You always joined in, and you were very proud of your record for being the one who had skipped the most classes, the one who had made most of their friends laugh because you had that fearless look on your face that wasn’t suited for searching for romance at all.

Then, third year came, and your thread broke. It started fraying in class when you picked absentmindedly at it, and then it got worse when you picked at it in the shower too, and then when finally one day you had to run back to your house because you forgot your pencil case, you realized that you weren’t connected to anything anymore.

You didn’t go to school that day. Nor for the next few days to come.

 

* * *

 

There’s a buzz around the air that only desperate, decomposing students can create in the narrow hallways of a high school in Japan. You’ve just come from lunch in the very crowded cafeteria after all your friends had abandoned you for some last minute cramming, leaving you to finish your ramen alone.

“Why am I not surprised to see you so damn calm?”

Once upon a time, you’d start to blush and lapse into silence at the mere sound of Iwaizumi’s voice, but time has done you wonders, like exposure therapy, and although you think you’ll never quite get over that incredible growth spurt of his, he’s not quite as overwhelming as he used to be. You pull out your notebook from the book slot on the underside of your desk and wave it lightly at him.

“I have my notes right here.”

His eyes widen, impressed. “Does this mean you actually studied for our quiz?”

“Nope,” you shake your head, and a small crease of a smile worms it way up to your cheeks, “but life must have an end, and I will end with dignity.”

Iwaizumi’s snort is so loud it almost echoes, and you start giggling along with his grin. “Right, shogun. I’ll see you on the other side.”

“You might pass, Hajime-kun, don’t give up just yet.”

“Pass?” Iwaizumi looks at you confusedly, before going ‘ah’ when he realizes what you mean. “Oh, I’ll just be waving to you from the other side of the river of success.” His grin widens, as it only ever does with you. “I’m going to pass, dammit. I didn’t suffer through Shittykawa’s study sessions for nothing.”

“…Tooru?”

“Yeah,” he raises an eyebrow, “something wrong?”

You shake your head. That satisfies him enough that he gives you a nod and a thumbs up, and walks back to his seat with the traces of your conversation together still lining his eyes.

It was a little odd. You hadn’t expected him to have studied with Oikawa, not when Iwaizumi had already found his soulmate. In his same class, even! Some people are just that blessed, and she’s quite the beauty too. Most of your friends have already taken to sneaking around, spending time with their soulmates if they knew them, and study sessions were the golden period of opportunity. Even for people without soulmates, because, this is high school, and everyone wants to date, and socialization is the lifeblood of youth, isn’t it?

The very thought makes you blush and want to wither away at the same time, because your heart isn’t ready for this at all. Not dating, nor the quiz. The class falls into a makeshift hush when your teacher finally strolls in with a mug of something in his hand, a far too happy expression on his face, and you join in the sudden shuffle of notes being put away and prayers being said. You dare a peek at Iwaizumi on the other end of the classroom and he catches you in the act- your cheeks colouring instantly- but he offers you a crooked smile and you expire a little inside.

All in all, you think when you face the blank piece of paper with an equally blank expression on your face, you think that any quiz is probably easier than being a teenager.

 

* * *

 

Things are always a little easier with Tooru around. There’s something to be said about his resilience against life’s trials, and although you haven’t quite shared the same crib as him as you did with Iwaizumi (although he did with Iwaizumi too- it’s a weird infant love triangle, now that you think about it), you find in him a different kind of comfort. You hope he finds some in you too, because you see the exhaustion that lines his face when he thinks nobody’s looking, and all you can do is offer a shoulder that you know he won’t lean on.

It’s after school, and luckily you’re on cleaning duty today and Oikawa has volunteered to stay behind with you, despite the fact that he usually goes off to practice volleyball on his own whenever he has the spare time. You’re not quite sure what’s changed, but you feel that something has, because you’re sitting uncomfortably underneath his stare as he perches on the edge of your desk, not a speck of shame in sight.

“They’re going to come by and ask if you want to go for some shopping and karaoke this weekend,” he says without any context whatsoever.

You blink. “Are you not going, Tooru?”

“Of course I am,” he rolls his eyes like it’s the dumbest thing he’s heard, “but I’m just giving you a heads up. I offered to invite you but you know Iwa-chan. Has to do everything himself.” You squirm in your seat when Oikawa pins you with that knowing look of his, and he seems find the way your face flushes several hues of pink very fascinating. “I know, by the way.”

“Know what?” You squeak.

“That you like our Iwa-chan.” He hops off the desk and instead drags another chair to sit right opposite of you. “You’re terrible at hiding things from your face.”

“I thought I was doing alright,” you mumble, fighting the urge to hide behind your school bag, “Hajime-kun hasn’t noticed yet.”

“Yes, well, he notices very little,” Oikawa declares boldly, despite the fact that the both of you know he’s very wrong on this account. “It doesn’t matter, I’m not here to bug you about it.”

Squinting a little, you peer at him curiously. “Then what are you here for?”

He shrugs like it’s nothing to him, and looks out the window with his chin in a hand. “Just to give you some company. His soulmate is coming with, if you’re wondering.”

Ah, now there was the fresh youthfulness in your best friend. Who in their right mind would skip out on a chance to get to know their soulmate more? Especially when it’s so rare anyone makes the discovery this early in life, you think it’s a terrible blessing and a curse at the same time. Anyhow, none of that is relevant to you anymore, no when you’re no longer privy to that exclusive group of individuals who are looking forward to the rest of their romantic lives, and here you are, having lived several years already knowing that nothing will make the broken string on your pinkie whole again.

No, that isn’t quite it. You’re not being entirely truthful with yourself, and from the way Oikawa is looking at you, you know he knows too.

“Do you believe in soulmates?” The question hits you out of the blue, and you gape a little.

“Nobody’s asked me that before,” you gasp.

“They should then,” Oikawa tucks his lip underneath a row of teeth and chews on it, “it’s stupid to assume that everyone believes in the same things. Some men still don’t believe in menstrual pain, did you know?”

“I do,” you’re giggling now, and there’s a small tug upwards on his lips, “now only if your fangirls heard you talk about such things!”

Oikawa shoots you a grin then, a rare one that appears less and less often the more time he spends on the opposite side of Shiratorizawa, and you discover belatedly that you’ll miss it if it ever disappeared. “All I’m saying is that the string doesn’t dictate your life. It shouldn’t, because then what’s the point in getting to know other people? Idiotic notion, if you ask me.”

“Is that what you believe, Tooru?” And he looks down pensively at the crimson thread around his pinkie and his unknown stranger assigned to him by divine intervention. “You haven’t been looking for your soulmate.”

This time when he looks at you, it feels like looking into the endless darkness of the universe and in his hazel eyes holds a mystery of life that’s about to be unravelled in a single moment of sincerity.

“I believe that I can fall in love with whomever I choose. If that person is my soulmate, then so be it. If it isn’t, then so be it.”

It all comes up to you in a swift moment, and you feel the choking truth scrabbling for purchase against the sides of your throat and your chest suddenly shrinks from too much air. Oikawa is still looking at you with those beautiful eyes, and quietly, he asks you again: “do you believe in soulmates?”

In another world, perhaps, you could learn to be half as brave as the man in front of you.

“I don’t want to,” you breathe, and it’s a heavy thing that sinks in between the both of you. “I don’t want to.”

 

* * *

 

As such, you’re invited and dragged along to the group-date on Sunday anyway, because there was never any hope of you saying no to Iwaizumi’s earnest face, no matter how grumpy his brows are. It’s a slightly chilly day, and you’ve not quite dressed as warmly as you wish you had, but you’re ready to spend some pocket money on a much needed emergency coat.

Shopping turns out to be quite the difficult affair when boys and girls want to look for very different things. Or rather, boys crazy about volleyball and the rest of you normal humans have to roll your eyes and hand it to them- their enthusiasm is unrivalled, so strong that everyone gets barrelled along into shopping for new shoes for their upcoming tournament. You personally have never really been into physical activity, and you find that part of you a sore point when Iwaizumi comes up to you more than once asking for your opinion, and all you can come up with is a stuttered ‘the dark grey looks slimmer, I think’, instead of anything substantial. He had  _looked_ satisfied with your comment, gratified even, but nothing could stop you from glaring at your own very un-sporty shoes in abject embarrassment for a few minutes afterwards.

Perhaps you had all dreamed it in your mind, his expressions, because when you all finally settle down into a massive booth that fits six people along with at least ten bags of shopping, Iwaizumi hasn’t glanced at you once. It’s a small place famous for its tonkotsu, very popular with the younger crowd, and the buzz of noise and dishes around you makes you almost dizzy. It feels that there’s barely enough space in your head for your thoughts, let alone the sounds of fifteen other people’s conversations.

“You alright?” A concerned voice pops up from opposite you and your head shoots up. Iwaizumi watches you with his stern expression, tinted with worry although his hands are still firmly pressed to his side. In a bitter moment, the thought that if he hadn’t spoken up at all, he’d look like he didn’t care. Yet as quickly as it came, you brush the thought away, ashamed of your ungratefulness.

“I’m fine,” you tell him with a reassuring smile, “it’s just a bit crowded in here.”

He nods slowly, eyes roaming the place. “A place this good is bound to have a full house on the weekend. I’m sorry about the noise. Did you want me to step out with you for a bit?”

His sleeves are rolled up, and you can see the string tying him and his soulmate together bunched up like veins along his toned muscle. She’s sitting right next to him, an equally concerned expression on her face, and you realize that in your wildest dreams, you couldn’t be as wonderful a person as she could be. To be jealous of something fated- what a pitiful person you are!

“I-”

“-C’mon, let’s go.” Tooru interrupts you with enviable timing and drags you up with a firm but gentle hand on your arm. He bumps into the person on the other side of him, but he waves the mutters off with an air of confidence. There’s nothing else you can do but obey, stricken dumb by how  _right_  Iwaizumi looks with his soulmate, and the steps you take feel more like stumbles out of the busy restaurant.

It’s nearing late evening and the hum of activity bleeds out into the open street from indoors. People with their bags, their books, hurrying to their next meals, groups of friends you recognize from the year below you laughing and bumping into each other as they push their way out of the busy department store opposite your restaurant. Neither you nor Oikawa are leaning on anything, wary of getting your clothes dirty, but his hands are loose by his side and although he isn’t quite facing you, you can feel his undivided attention prickling at your skin.

“Better?”

“Yes,” you take a few experimental breaths, and yes, it is a bit more comfortable out in the open with fewer people. “It was probably just the oil from the kitchens getting to me. Would you like to go back in?”

Oikawa doesn’t answer, continuing to stare out at the bustling road and you join him in his silence. You knew it was probably unrealistic to spend too much time out here, it wasn’t very polite on a group outing after all, but you can’t find it in you to pull yourself away from whatever peace and quiet you can find.

You’re surprised out of your reverie by the loud sigh that leaves Tooru’s mouth and you turn to see his gaze on you, almost a foot higher than your head. “You two are really a mess, aren’t you?”

“I-It’s just me, I think,” you stammer, confused as to how to proceed from this less than flattering statement. Still, you know he’s right, and what’s more, you agree. You are a mess, everything’s a mess, and all you have going for you at this moment is the hope that when you graduate, maybe you can forget about this mess entirely.

Almost echoing your sentiments, Oikawa announces into the air, “we’re almost graduating. I don’t know what goes on in either of your heads but time waits for no man.”

“I wasn’t expecting it to…”

“So take it from me, the person who has never had enough time. If you’ve nothing to lose, why not go for it?”

Nothing to lose? There was everything to lose- your friendship, the quiet trust built up from solid years of growing up, his  _life_ , and what about his soulmate? There was a circle in hell for people who broke two people who looked so wonderful together, apart.

What if it didn’t work? What if you’d never have anything more than a broken thread on your pinkie, and the last chance of being happy had disappeared the day it snapped.

“Your mom would be really sad if she knew.”

“…What?” You ask faintly.

Oikawa tuts and shakes his gorgeous head like he’s explaining something profoundly obvious to a dullard. “You came running to me the day you came back to school, remember? When your thread broke. You were crying and everything- it was horrible, you almost got snot on my new sweater- but you had that anger in your eyes when you told me that you’d be happy anyway, thread or no thread, because your mom was happy without hers. So? Where did all that go?”

“I was  _nine_!”

“And you were a smarter kid at nine than you are now at seventeen.” Oikawa replies savagely, and his accusation slaps you in the face with a nice dose of humility. The restaurant feels a world away now, where you had been planning on letting everything be and getting through the years like Iwaizumi had never meant more to you, and you just know that you can’t go back. You couldn’t bear to be a terrible person and sit opposite his soulmate, whose kindness and innocence you had come to envy for no redeeming reason at all.

“Go home,” Oikawa tells you a little more kindly now, and you nod wordlessly. “I’ll tell them that you’re feeling sick.”

He doesn’t give you a chance to say anything else, because he spins on his heel and strides back into the restaurant like he’d never been out in the first place, and slowly, your mind reaches your feet to take you in the direction of your home, step by step.

Still.  _‘Thank you’_ , you tap into your phone, and a reply buzzes right back within seconds.

 _‘I know’,_  is all Oikawa replies with, and it brings an unbidden smile to your face.  You think that you must be a  _little_  blessed at the very least, with a friend like him.

 

* * *

 

It turns out that when you successfully suffer through the majority of a social gathering only to leave because of ‘illness’, people are either incredibly suspicious, or very worried. Luckily, your track record is stellar, and the only expression that turns up on each person’s face as they ask you all throughout the day at different times if you’re alright, is worry. You’ve never had to quietly and very awkwardly assure so many people of your health in one afternoon before, but the break did you some good. Your mother had immediately sensed something was wrong the moment you walked into the house, slightly miserably, but she had left you alone after a few deflected questions and offered you a small tray of biscuits as a peace offering. You’d made your way through it slowly as the night grew later until you were almost suffocating underneath your blankets because of what an idiot you’ve realized you were.

The thing is, they talk about these things with such ease in stories- those childhood friends go on an adventure and find out the love of their life was right there all along!- but in reality, it’s quite a dreadful experience for you. The harder you try to solve your stress, the worse Iwaizumi’s imagine in your head gets, and the less you want to say anything at all.

It was just a silly crush, something you really thought was unfair and most likely to never work out, because he’s  _found_  his soulmate; you’ve yet to meet anyone your age who wasn’t with their soulmate. Who were you break anything up?

Then the man of the hour inevitably shows up as you’re trying to make your way back to your desk as innocuously as possible, and your own unfamiliarity with melodramatics that keeps you from gasping out loud in surprise.

Iwaizumi leans closer to you at the noise, the worried press of his lips the only thing you can recognize in your swimming vision. “Are you feeling any better? Did you eat something bad as a snack or something yesterday?”

It feels like his worried face is all you see these days.

“Not really,” you answer with utmost vagueness, growing more nervous with every passing moment he’s standing in your personal bubble, “I’m alright now, I think I was just dehydrated.” He doesn’t look very persuaded, so you add, “that’s what my mom says, anyway.”

“Good. I trust your mom more than you when it comes to your health,” he says, blasé, a challenging grin teasing his mouth and the crushing guilt leaves you quickly at the sight.

Although, he does have a point, and the memory of many nights of denial brings an embarrassed blush to your face. Iwaizumi seems to squirm a little underneath your silence, and the bold grin starts to melt off his face until all that’s left is a quiet feeling of awkwardness. He clears his throat, and your eyes flicker up to watch him underneath several wisps of hair that’s fallen in front of your face.

“I’m sorry to have worried you,” you offer, unsure.

“Oh,” he looks a mildly surprised and shakes his head a little strongly, “well, as long as you’re fine.”

“…Okay.”

“I…”

Pigs must be flying today for Iwaizumi Hajime to be flustered. He wasn’t even flustered when he’d discovered his soulmate, or when they confessed to him, or when he had shrugged without a moment’s hesitation. It’s dreadfully contagious, however, and soon enough you’re almost hopping on your toes from how flustered you are too.

When Iwaizumi tries again in a pained tone, you startle. “Are you… Do you have time after school today? Want to go… somewhere?”

He doesn’t add to it, but his expression is clearly regretting realizing the great irony of asking you to hang out, the day after you got sick from hanging out. It makes you almost chuckle, but you keep it firmly under wraps, otherwise it’d blow your already terrible cover that perhaps you weren’t quite so sick after all.

“That sounds nice,” you reply softly, sounding a lot more confident that you feel. “I’ll wait for you at the gates, maybe?”

Iwaizumi nods, relieved, and turns away reluctantly, because there’s really nothing much else to do than to go to class once the conversation is so clearly over. You give him a little wave to usher him on his way, and when you’re almost immediately crowded by a curious Oikawa, you don’t mention how there’s always volleyball practice on Mondays.

The rest of the day goes infuriatingly slowly for you, and without the benefit of a romantic window seat, you’re left to your own devices of actually paying attention to class in a desperate attempt to make the clock turn faster. You think you’ve never been quite nervous in your life, and the suddenness of his company does nothing to soothe your nerves. Have you done something wrong? He looked rather like he’d not do this at all, so it might be bad news. Or maybe he needs to tell you something he thinks you might not like.

You don’t know how much more tense things could be between the two of you. Unless he’s getting married the moment he turns eighteen. In that case, yes, it could get worse, marginally.

Still, for how much you’d been wishing the day would pace itself at least faster than a limp slug, the end of the day comes rushing at you like tidal wave, and you find the bell ringing long before you’re mentally prepared for a very awkward few hours. Perhaps he had been putting this off for a long time, perhaps he didn’t want to do this more than you did, perhaps it was just something to be done.

You change into your outside shoes with the weight of dread pulling at your limbs until you feel as if your feet are dragging you along towards the school gates. There’s a quiet cough that you realize is supposed to grab your attention, and you look up to find Iwaizumi already waiting for you, leaning against the brick. You smile, and faintly realize that he’s grown up so fast you’d barely had time to catch up.

“Let’s go then,” he says quietly, so you follow him, falling into pace beside him. You’re far shorter than he is, and it doesn’t help your heart when he suddenly glances back at you and slows down to a speed you’re more comfortable with.

All you can hear is the blood rushing about your ears, whilst your pulse drains simultaneously with each block the two of you pass, and still you have no clue where you’re headed.

“Want to get some coffee?” Iwaizumi asks, almost as if he’s read your mind.

You smile wanly. “Okay. That’s very American of you, Hajime-kun.”

“Right, that’s me, American man with a gun and my favourite food is hamburgers.”

“Now that just wasn’t funny,” you grin.

“Yeah? Then why is it every time I actually try, you’re cracking up and in tears?”

You’ve nothing to say to that, because he’s right, and you’re so embarrassed you could die. You didn’t know it was that bad, that you were that obvious, and you wish that part of you wasn’t so incredibly see-through and flimsy like cling-film. If he notices the sudden redness to your face, Iwaizumi doesn’t comment on it.

Whatever he wants to tell you, or has planned obviously doesn’t involve the walk to the café itself, and most of it is spent admiring nature and trying to ignore the awkwardness in the air. Your introverted nature has almost ensured you a lot of practice with awkward moments and moments where you want to run away, but feeling this way with Iwaizumi of all people is an utterly new experience. One that you wish didn’t set your nerves on edge, and reprieve can’t come fast enough when the two of you finally reach the café, with at least a whole person’s space between each other, and your step falters a little when he holds open the door for you and you can’t quite remember what to do after that.

His amused raise of an eyebrow still does things to your heartbeat no matter how awkward you’ve become. You try terribly hard to stop yourself from thumping at your chest to calm down, which would require possibly a lot of reassuring that you haven’t lost all of your marbles.

“I’ll go get you a drink then. Latte with extra sweet, right?”

“Yes,” and all the blood in your body relocates to your face, “thank you.”

“No problem,” he throws you an easy smile and you have to quickly sit down in your seat before your legs start to dissolve into the air.

It’s a tense few minutes alone at the table. If he’s putting so much effort into this meeting, it couldn’t be too bad of an announcement, right? If he’s still smiling, it can’t possibly be earth-shattering. Your thumbs twiddle almost spastically. Or maybe he’s just being extra nice because it’s terrible news. Embarrassing, life-changing news that will leave you to salt your coffee with your own tears.

Iwaizumi promptly sits himself down in the chair opposite you, and you immediately shut your mind up. Maybe you were being a little melodramatic. Maybe.

“So, uh, how was class?” He tries, clearly jumbled up, and it makes you feel slightly better about yourself.

“Terrible,” you laugh, “I don’t know why I bother paying attention in class.”

“You aren’t laughing at me, are you?”

That man is far too observant when he wants to be. You shrug, but the smile can’t quite leave your face. “Just a little.”

Iwaizumi makes an attempt at looking put out, but there’s a light in his eyes that doesn’t quite dim when it comes to you being cheerful. You wager he knows, what this is doing to your nerves, but he probably is too preoccupied with his own to do anything about it.

“I was thinking…” he finally begins, but pauses abruptly when your drinks are finally brought to you by an amused looking waiter. There’s a terrible silence until the staff member waltzes too slowly out of earshot, and by then, Iwaizumi’s face is beet red and he almost looks horrified at his own thoughts.

“You were thinking…?” You prompt, and he almost sighs disappointedly at something. That’s for you to do, you think to yourself, but your lips remain sealed.

“I was thinking… would you… oh God this is worse than what Shittykawa told me but… would you, I mean- oh fuck it, I like you, okay?”

You’re not quite sure what Tooru has to do with anything other than the fact that he’s a general busybody when it comes to private affairs, but you nod, like to a small child.

“Of course, I’d hope so,” you tell him. “We’ve known each other for so long, I- I hope you like me, at the very least.”

Good lord, maybe this was what he was going to say. To tell you that you’re still friends, but he might be eloping. Or dying. Or telling you that he’s actually gay and hoping that you won’t hate him. Nothing in this world could possibly make you hate Iwaizumi, you admit to yourself, and that is probably not a good thing.

He, on the other hand, looks like he’s about to implode. You’ve never seen him be anything more dramatic than ‘long-suffering’, so this is an incredibly novel experience.

“That’s- yeah, of course I like you, but that’s not what I meant.”

“O-oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” It makes you want to say sorry again, and Iwaizumi sees it on your face so he hurries to cut you off before you do. “I… I guess what I’m doing is confessing. Just… without the letter, or the chocolates. And this isn’t exactly a rooftop in the sunset either.”

He’s rambling, but it doesn’t matter. You freeze, despite the sudden spike of fight-or-flight response that bangs its gong in your head, and this is going all  _wrong_. How- how is that he looks nervous, and you’re being  _confessed to_ ; you can’t help it, it’s another sort of reflex when your jaw locks into place and your gaze jerks immediately to his hand Iwaizumi catches your shift in attention- he hasn’t looked away from you for a second, that brave soul- and he tugs at his sleeve reluctantly, trying to keep himself from covering it.

“I have a soulmate, yeah,” he says, rather redundantly in your opinion, because everyone who’s heard of Iwaizumi knows he’s found his soulmate, and the last time you checked, it still wasn’t you. “I just… do you believe in soulmates?”

“This again,” you breathe slightly hysterically, and the thought that maybe Oikawa Tooru is the great puppet master of the universe crosses your mind several times in overexcited laps.

“Huh?”

“No,” you respond more clearly, “I don’t want to.” His expression falls a little, and you quickly clarify, “I mean- I don’t.” You don’t need to glance down anymore to know that your thumb is already reaching towards your bare pinkie to rub at it self-consciously. Iwaizumi follows your movement, and in one heart-stopping moment, he pulls his hands off his mug and reaches to grasp your hand in the firmest grip you’ve ever felt in your life. He gives your cold, clammy hand a confident squeeze, and you feel the warmth of his palm squeeze your frail heart too.

His eyes are burning into yours and it hurts- whether from the intensity, from your imagination or from all the insecurity he seems to be searing away from your soul into ashes that fall around you like cherry blossoms, because he’s your childhood friend, your Iwaizumi, and if anyone can carry out miracles, it’s him.

“It’s hard to not believe in something everyone else thinks is common sense, huh.” He says with aching gentleness, lips curling into a woeful smile that shatters all the walls you’ve worked so hard at building, block by block. In just one sentence, without prompting, he has said what you thought nobody else would be able to understand. “It’s one thing to live against it, and another to just live… without it.” There’s a pointed silence, and his fingers tighten around yours; you know that instance he’s talking about all the times he’s seen your face torn up because of your broken string and his intact one, the first gap in the gaping abyss that’s grown between you and the rest of your peers.

Of course, all it took was for Iwaizumi to bare his soul to you, and the bridge falls and suddenly, you feel like you can have faith in yourself again. Even if just a little.

“I got used to it,” you say, voice smaller than you imagined. “Mom, and all. It wasn’t like I didn’t know.”

The biggest question is still unsaid when Iwaizumi nods with tender understanding. He’s keeping quiet, and you’re not ready enough to ask it of him yet. In case this is just a dream, in case it wasn’t what you had been wishing for all this time.

Miracles, like you said. He performs another like it’s nothing, and the words come up without you needing to spare a glance.

“I… I believed in it at first. Who doesn’t, in the day and age? But…” His voice begins to waver, and in a single historic moment of bravery, you turn your hand over so that you’re properly holding hands, and you squeeze back too. You hear his breath hitch, and you’re more sure of this than anything else you’ve been. “I… I guess I just came to love you, more and more. I didn’t realize it at first, because you weren’t on the other side of my string, and even though sure, it’s easy with her, like I barely have to try and we fit, but… you…”

You’re crying a little. “You make me want to try to fit, even if we might not. Right?”

“Right.” And he sounds like he might be crying too. He isn’t, when you look away from your joined hands, the sure expression evergreen on his face, but his voice betrays him.

“I don’t know much about love,” you murmur, “all that I do it’s from my mom or from books, but I’ve always found something romantic in the fact that you get to choose who you spend the rest of your life with. To love again. Who says that we’re only allowed one great love in our lives, and everything else will pale in comparison? Why can’t we have two? Three? As many as our little hearts tell us we need, because we’re  _us_ , right?”

He’s silent, cupping your every word in his hands like the water of life, and for the first time in a long time, you’re not here with Iwaizumi, your crush. You’re with Iwaizumi, the only person you ever thought was for you, and would probably be for a very long time. There’s no wealth in the world that could buy genuine understanding- and in a dizzying moment you feel so much more blessed than anyone with a red thread. Despite yours breaking, despite the odds of being born anyone else in the world, you were born here, in a small town in Miyagi, and you met him.

You hope that he knows that no matter what comes of you two, you’ll forever think him beautiful beyond compare.

“’Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all’,” Iwaizumi says with a smile, “they used to say that a long time ago. I guess it doesn’t really apply when we’ve all got threads.”

“They just assume you love, don’t they?” You match his smile with your own, a bit watery but very touched.

“I’d rather let myself love who I want, than love what’s just there. Something I had to fight for, instead of sitting there and letting it happen.”

If Iwaizumi tried to persuade you to jump off a cliff with that amount of earnestness, you would do it without a second’s hesitation.

“You’re making a very convincing argument, Hajime-kun.”

He laughs that rich laugh of his and you feel your cheeks colour again like normal. “It’s only convincing if it works.” He leans forwards like he always does in that way that steals chunks of your lifespan. “So? What do you say? Want to give it a try together?”

“It’s…” you can feel the edge of each syllable along the grooves of your tongue, ready to leave your lips, but they just won’t come, “will it break? The thread. Will it come back?”

He waits, like it’s the one thing he was certain to come from this whole conversation.

“You… will you be able to go back if you realize you’ve made a mistake?”

Iwaizumi answers you like god answers prayers- with conviction and a love that can only come from deep within. “Maybe not. But that doesn’t change how I feel, and that doesn’t change what I think. We can try and try again until we find something that works. If it doesn’t, I know that I’d never regret it having happened.”

This man is too blinding, and you barely deserve him. Maybe a few days before and you would have said something very different, but this time your ‘alright’ comes in a whole exhilarated rush and the moments where he pushes even closer to you to press his lips quietly against yours for a mere moment feels like heartbreak- already happened, so intense that nothing could possibly outdo this single moment ever again.

“I- we’re in a café!” You hiss once your brain restarts itself successfully, but Iwaizumi only falls back into his hair with a satisfied grin on his face that borders on smug.

“Is PDA a no then?”

“No!”

“A shame,” he murmurs lowly, and something alive curls in your gut from the way his voice wraps around his words like they’ve been coated in syrup, “I’ve always wanted to try that kissing thing that Oikawa always does with whatever girlfriend he has.”

‘Kissing’ makes your head steam with embarrassment, and if you had your hand back to yourself you would most definitely cover your face with it. “You’ve been spending too much time with Tooru.”

“Probably,” Iwaizumi says ruefully, “what’s done is done, I suppose.”

Indeed, it was, and on Iwaizumi’s finger, the red thread lies snapped, on the table, like it had never been whole in the first place. It only takes a short glance at your expression for Iwaizumi to fall back into sobriety and very slowly, as if trying not to spook you, he gets up and gently pulls the chair from under you. “Let’s go,” he suggests, and you’re the first to pad out of the coffee shop while he gives the table a cursory look over for forgotten items.

The previous conversation falls into a lull, a comfortable one, that accompanies the dimming sky. You feel like there should be more embarrassment, more nervousness about first-times after your lives have been flipped over in one single afternoon, but there isn’t. There’s only the feeling of comfort and companionship that takes its place between the two of you and pulls you closer together like magnets. There’s a smile on your face while you walk, and his is alight with anticipation for whatever is to come.

First, it’s your shoulders that bump. Yet, you barely even pause when you feel Iwaizumi quietly sliding his hand over yours and he hooks his pinkie around your own.

“I love you,” he says into the road ahead, like he wants to say it just once, in case he never gets to again.

“I-I know,” you can’t help but stammer, but the deep chuckle beside you emboldens you. “I love you also,” you try again, and he hums.

You might never know what it’s like to have a complete thread, to have a destined soulmate, but you think that in any reality, having someone so wonderful understand you so wholly is the closest thing on earth to finding one.


	53. Hitting their s/o in the heat of the moment with Kuroo, Oikawa, Iwaizumi, Kyoutani and Suga

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Domestic violence
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> sooo i read all of ur scenarios literally under 30 minutes and i loved one of the first ones u did where their s/o thought the guys were gonna hit her? (is that worrying that i liked that) i mean i liked it in a sense that the guys reassured her etc and i was thinking if you could either do reactions or a scenario to when kuroo, oikawa, iwai, kyoutani and suga hit their s/o in the heat of the moment during a fight? like it doesnt have to be a heavy hit or just a harsh shove or something  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I’m sorry for taking literal months to do this, and thank you for your patience! I took a more boys-oriented perspective this time, so I’m not quite sure this turned out how my original post was, but I hope you enjoy it anyway._

He knows he plays rough sometimes.  **Kuroo** ’s not a naturally harsh person and to him, you’re the one person besides his family that he holds closest to his heart because of how well you two fit together. The only way he knows how to go about that is to keep you as close to him as possible and do his best to make your days a little brighter, a little happier.

Any dreams about him being your saving grace vanishes the moment he sees your expression when you fold into yourself at an angle, winded from the heavy hit of his arm against your collar. It’s not a punch, he knows, it’s not a slap either, but it’s contact that’s hard enough to bruise and his image is beginning to blur from the sheen of tears that well up against your will.

“ _Shit_ -” he starts forwards, his arm reaching out to you but it freezes in its place when you level it with an icy glare. Kuroo lets it drop to his side, limp and useless, much like his mind, and his mouth opens and closes, mute and with apologies that struggle to surface all at once. He picks one, but it’s inadequate no matter how he turns it over over on his tongue.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” he attempts, insistent and desperate, “ _fuck_ , how bad did I hurt you?”

There’s all bone and little meat on you, and the imprint of his knuckles grows a little pink on the edge of purple against the bare part of your chest. It looks like you got mauled, even if nothing on your face will give away the pain, he imagines that on himself and winces. Kuroo’s too afraid to spook you further so he stays stock still, but he aches inside when you take a protective step back from him.

“I’m okay.” You say, and his heart cracks from how readily you tell him. “I’ve had worse.”

“That…” he’s lost. He sees you shutting down in front of him, retreating back to some time when this was a regular occurrence- exactly what he wanted to save you from. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

You glance down at the purple blossoming across your skin, and almost casually, you run a finger over it. “It’s going to bruise,” you comment. Kuroo winces again at how careless you sound, like it was nothing- like  _he_  was nothing, just a random stranger who passed by and rammed their bag against you by accident.

It’s too obvious that it’s not nothing, not when he shifts forwards, and you shift backwards. Almost in tandem; a dance where he’ll never be able to catch you back from wherever you’re falling into again. He remembers the bruises you used to have that you couldn’t explain, and he’s just given you another one, and although it’s unreasonable and he’s  _always_ reasonable, he feels the blame for all those bruises that have ever come to pass fall onto his shoulders. It’s heavy, and he strains underneath it.

“I think we should take a break,” you say as if this was a debate, rather than the discussion that would make or break everything, “I’m going to find some ointment, or something.”

You want to leave, he can see it in your eyes and the brusque way your mouth twists and your forehead furrows- he doesn’t blame you, but he can’t. Kuroo already feels as if he’s suffocating, and something screams at him that if he lets you go through those doors, some part of the two of you will never come back.

“Wait-” he urges- he doesn’t care about the way you flinch when his hand wraps around yours, nor the way you look avoid his eyes and stare at the part where the two of you touch like it’s an infection- he presses tighter, until he can feel your pulse underneath his fingers, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

You say nothing, and he comes closer.

“Will you,” he almost mumbles, and Kuroo never mumbles, “sit; I’ll get you something for that.”

He doesn’t take his eyes off you even when you sink onto the sofa, and he comes back with some of his muscle injury cream cradled in his hands. It’s cold when he dips his fingers in and traces the ointment along the edges of your bruise and you shiver. It’s a small thing, just a tremble, but it’s strong enough to shake him too, and he’s hugging you before either of you feel the warmth.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and his chest thuds the same pattern of words against yours, “please believe me.”

He takes in the first breath in hours when he feels your own arms slowly, wrap around his back in return.

 

* * *

 

You don’t feel the pain until his grip relaxes- his broad hand wrapped around a frail looking wrist of yours, pale from the sudden lack of circulation and your gaze follows  **Iwaizumi** ’s to your hand. He lets go as if he’s electrocuted, and your arm drops unceremoniously back to your side as if it had never risen at all, save for the ugly red mark around it in the shape of a handprint. A  _deliberate_  handprint, and all that’s on his face is horror.

No, not at the thing that’s marring your skin- he doesn’t believe that anything could ever mar you- but at his calloused, careless hand that put it there in the first place.

 _Brute_ , the voice in his head offers with a smugness that he wants to tear apart,  _all you can do is spike, now look what you’ve done_.

“Hajime?”

He doesn’t hear, because he refuses to be the one comforted right now- it just isn’t  _right_. Iwaizumi has yet to look into your face to find out what kind of expression you have on, but he has an inkling of what his looks like. Possibly as ugly as he feels in this moment.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, voice low and harsh and it sounds more like an accusation than an apology, “I didn’t realize I was hurting you.”

“It’s alright-” you begin, but whatever you’re saying isn’t registering, “I mean, it hurts but I know-”

“-I’m going to go,” he interrupts, and you find yourself at a loss for words because this is the first time you’ve seen Iwaizumi, the certain, always strong and steady Iwaizumi, look like the spirit of regret painted on a human face. You nod, because that’s the only thing you can do, and he feels grateful that at least he can bow out with a modicum of composure. The door closes behind him with a muted click, and he disappears down the staircase.

Perhaps it’s not what you deserve, nor is it the best conflict resolution, but he avoids you for the next few days. It’s a challenge, because you’re acting like nothing’s happened, like it was a mistake and you even smile at him in the hallways, but he can’t bring himself to return them. Nobody asks about why the two of you aren’t spending time around each other much, and Iwaizumi doesn’t notice the looks either- he walks with his head hung low, his hands in his pockets, and feeling entirely too downcast to return your smile.

What he does, however, is leave small things (ointment, snacks, post-it notes, sports drinks, bandages) where he knows you’ll find them throughout the day. He simply isn’t the type to wallow in self-pity for long, but there’s something that always holds him back, like he’s proven himself unworthy, from talking to you again, and he can’t help but be bitter about his lack of apology the day it happened. There’s no good way he can go about it, and even when he writes the post-it notes, the emotions are kept bursting at the edge of the pen, and all he manages to leave are instructions.

It hits day four when he returns to his apartment to see you sitting cross-legged on a second-hand bar stool, sipping a glass of his orange gatorade. There’s a bandage on your wrist- the brand that he’d left by your desk a few days prior in silence- but he allows himself to pull away from that and meet your eyes. They’re a lot softer than he had anticipated, and his heart clenches at the traces of forgiveness already given.

“Hey,” you offer a warm smile, “welcome home. I missed you.”

This was all what he was supposed to say, yet they’ve found their way to him from your lips, and there’s no battling against the tired laugh that pulls itself from his mouth. It’s half-hearted, exhausted, but it leaves a hint of a smile on both your faces because it’s better than nothing- better than radio silence for four days.

“Hello,” the word feels awfully unfamiliar in his ears, and he wishes he could say it a few times again for practice before you heard it. Still, he can’t deny the way he relaxes when he sees you, even if he’s unmoving as he watches you stand up and walk over to wrap him in a tight hug. “How’s your wrist?” He asks slowly, not quite sure if it’s him who needs the extra seconds, or you.

He can feel your smile against his shoulder. “It’s a bit bruised,” you answer, “but it’ll be fine, with your ointment and your bandages.”

“Good,” he breathes, and lets it travel its course as you pull back to glance up into his somber face.

“It was an accident,” you tell him again, “I’m alright, Hajime. I know you didn’t mean it.”

He takes your wrist in his hands after a long moment, and turns it over with light fingers. When you don’t pull away, and he doesn’t tense, he finally sighs, and nods with a tentative smile.

 

* * *

**Oikawa** knows he isn’t famous for his patience, but it’s hitting a record low when you’re waving that piece of paper around in the air like it’s the fucking revolution and  _why won’t you agree with him?_ It’s a close battle between angry tears and icy looks between the two of you, and he could be chanting something from a demon summoning and you wouldn’t be able to hear because your furious voice is ringing in his ears and he wants you to  _shut up_.

He can’t force your chin up so the sounds stop blaring, so he does the second closest thing. It’s easy as kicking a child because that’s what his biceps are built for, hitting things, so he aims, reaches and with a satisfying slap, he smacks the piece of paper out of your hands.

He feels mutinous at the way it flutters to the floor. He thinks it should sink, sink like the stupid weight that it is, but when he glances up at you with smug satisfaction that there’s no more goddamn paper-whipping anymore, you’re several shades paler than when he had looked down.

Oikawa frowns, and looks down against for good measure. “It’s just a piece of paper,” he says. He wants to snap, because frankly this whole fight over chores is ridiculous, but he can’t quite bring himself to sound cruel when you’re looking like he had just hit you.

He pales too. Well,  _fuck_.

“Okay,” you reply, voice brittle and Oikawa can’t even remember what you’re replying to in the first place. “I got your message.”

He presses his lips together and marvels reluctantly over how composed and chilly you sound, because all he can see are wide eyes are tears and trembling lips. There’s only two feet of air between him and smoothing all those creases away with his fingers, but he doesn’t. It’s two feet he can’t find it in himself to cross.

“I wasn’t going to hit you, if that’s what you thought,” Oikawa tells you sharply, and your face crumples further until all he can see is the ghost of the features that once smiled at him so brightly.

“You might as well have,” your voice tiptoes on the edge between sorrow and bitterness, and if the apartment wasn’t empty besides the two of you, he would have barely caught the words, breathed out and never to be retrieved.

He watches wordlessly as you turn away from him to pick up the abandoned paper and you smooth it in vain against the length of your jeans. The sheet of paper feels infinitely heavier now than when you had pulled it off the fridge, and you carry it back to your room and you turn the corner, out of sight, without another word said.

Oikawa finds himself tongue-tied and helpless, unable to come up with a single word about the redness of your hand.  _This is ridiculous_ , he repeats to himself,  _a stupid argument over stupid things,_  and for a moment he pulls his back upright and he believes that you’re both better people than this. The first step back towards the kitchen feels like shifting against Jupiter’s gravity, and his knees tremble when he sees the pile of dishes in the sink. You chose those dishes together, preferring a whole set instead of odd additions in your new apartment. Shared apartment.

Oikawa spares the door to your room a second glance. It’s not shut, and the weight of its silence welcome sears into his back long after he’s turned back around.

Maybe he should wash them. The paper says it’s his turn, but he’s so tired from the long day after practice and class and he feels the familiar burn of indignation bubbling in his chest, but it’s dies down when he sees the empty spot where the timetable should be. Now it’s in your hands, in your room where you’re alone, and if Oikawa stops ranting to himself for a second, there’s the sound of muted crying in the form of great, heaving breaths.

He picks up the last clean mug on the rack, and fills it with the last of the coffee. Even if his bare feet make no noise against the soft carpeted floor, if he can feel the vibrations, you can too. The laborious breathing slows when he approaches the doorway, and Oikawa can feel your eyes on him long before he summons enough courage to meet them with his. A few more steps, just a few more, and you pay no attention to the steaming mug set beside your lamp and Oikawa picks up your hand in both of his and rubs over the soft ridges of your bones with careful thumbs.

“Does it hurt?” He mumbles guiltily. Your chilly silence doesn’t pause for air, and Oikawa accepts the answer for what it is. After all, he never was the brave one. That was all you.

So he does the only thing he knows how without losing his nerve; he throws his arms around you before you can spot the angry tears running down his face too, and cries his apologies into the dip of your sweater that you had stolen from his wardrobe. He can feel your muscles freeze from each brush he presses against you, but he holds on, like his Peleus to your Thetis, until his misery moves you to forgiveness.

The apology goes unsaid, having seeped thoroughly into dampness in your clothes, and you hold him back.

 

* * *

 

His fist connects with a solid  _crunch_ , and the familiar feeling of catharsis and righteous fury settles itself deep in his bones and  **Kyoutani**  sinks backwards on his heels, readying himself for retaliation.

It’s not that he doesn’t understand- he does, he’s been told about this countless times by his friends, his family, his teachers- but it doesn’t register in his mind until he doesn’t get the punch he’s expecting from you, but you’re sitting, unmoving, on the cool wooden floor and a shaking hand cupped to your cheek like a broken bird. You’re crying, and his clenched fingers relax against his palm. He considers offering a hand, but that’s too out of character, to strange for this whole argument that had been going exactly the way he had expected it to, until now.

“You’re crying,” he says out loud, for your benefit, he thinks, but the only response is a broken sob and Kyoutani finds he can’t discern if it’s from pain or if it’s from sadness. Thinking about the latter makes his chest hurt, and he’s lost; this has never happened before. It isn’t supposed to be like this- it’s not his first punch, for fuck’s sake, so what the hell was happening?

“Fuck you,” he hears you spit, and his fist tightens once again but his chest doesn’t stop hurting. In fact, it hurts more, but you’re rising to your feet with hatred scorching the edges of your gaze and you’ve stormed away before he can reach out to you. Reach out to ask you: why does it still ache?

Kyoutani makes no move to follow you. He chooses to sink into the empty sofa instead, blinking at the frame of your television and letting his mind rummage through his memories to find a reason why this was all going south. He’d asked his seniors before, and they had all told him that arguments were part of a relationship. Okay, he got that part. So this was nothing out of the ordinary. Yet, minutes turn into hours, and he blinks again to realize that it’s past sunset and it’s too dark for him to count the number of books on your shelf for the fifteenth time. At least he knows that most of his anger is gone, and his confusion paving way for more concise thought and he makes his way to the kitchen, flicking on a light when he passes it.

This too, is a familiar process as his he feels his fingers numb as he drops the ice cubes into a plastic bag lying around and he ties a knot around it with the type of ease that only comes with practice. It’s possible there’d be bruising by now, and although ice wouldn’t make it any easier to look at, at least it would dull the pain. Unlike his own.

He carries it to the balcony where you sit, solemn underneath a set of dim lights from the apartment next door and holds out in offering without a word.

You take it, also without a word. It’s late to soothe much, but the throbbing subsides and although your fingers feel so cold they’re about to freeze off, you steadfastly keep the bag pressed against your cheek. You haven’t bothered to look into a mirror yet and no matter what you find, you know that it’ll pale in comparison to what’s already been done.

Kyoutani’s no closer to an answer outside than he was inside, but he keeps his feet still where he is and sways as the clock ticks the seconds passing. There’s nothing exchanged, but he feels like he’s on a stand, being judged by one who has his fate tied to the noose. It strikes him that perhaps, this isn’t something he can fight his way out of.

“I’m sorry.” It’s rash and sounds more like a threat than anything, but he knows he’s on the right track when the pressure eases from his ribs. “I- It probably wasn’t a good idea. To punch you.”

“You think?”

Kyoutani shrinks, and his head ducks low. “This feels like admitting defeat,” he confesses.

“It’s not a fucking battle,” you snarl, your roles reversed, and Kyoutani takes a step back.

“Y-yeah,” he breathes, and the ache rushes back anew, only now it isn’t from confusion, but realization. If he thought that talking was difficult before, it’s a hundred times more unwilling now. “I’m sorry,” he offers again, this time genuine, enlightened, and he backs out of the small space to give you back yours.

 

* * *

**Suga** ’s voice of reason tells him that it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t what he  _intended_ , he didn’t  _want_ to hurt you, but the thrumming in his blood overwhelms the small voice that pleads from somewhere he’d hidden behind bars for the time being. You were his voice of reason, you were what allowed him to be the doting one, the silly one, the one who made you laugh at the worst times, but right now he can’t even bear to look at you.

He can only imagine how much that hurt you- another thing he didn’t intend, but it’s happening anyway and Suga’s screwing everything up so badly that he wants to beat himself up and never see the light of day again. He can hear his mother knock on the door, asking if he’d like some food, but he can only muster enough energy to give her a weak dismissal. Her footsteps fade away slowly, like she’s turning back to stare worriedly at his door every two steps.

The stupid thing is, it’s been two days, and he still hasn’t been able to bring himself to show up anywhere near you yet. Each time any of his friends mention your name, all he can remember is the way he had slammed you into the wall, a weak grunt and the deafening silence that followed because it had been an accident, like he had said, but there was such condemnation in both of your faces in that split second that Suga thinks he’ll never, ever be able to forget.

So much for protecting his girlfriend, for whatever he had promised when he had asked to date you.

He pushes back his covers for a small pocket of air to finds its way into his cave of misery, and several buzzes comes from his abandoned phone by his desk. It’s with cold, clammy hands he reaches out and swipes to read them from the corner of his vision.

 _You need to see her, Suga,_ comes Daichi’s logical voice,  _you owe her at least that._

 _She hasn’t said more than two sentences to me,_ Noya’s message is seeped with frenzy,  _are you guys still okay???_

 _Suga, come on._  Asahi’s message is the most damning of all of them, and Suga drowns in shame of his own making.

 _I’m sorry,_ he begins to type, but deletes it quickly.  _I hope you’re alright,_ he amends,  _are you at home right now?_ He presses send, and waiting for your reply feels like waiting for a jury’s judgement.

 _I’m at home_ , his phone buzzes and his gut sinks to his knees,  _are you coming over? I’ll tidy up for you._

His hair’s more of a mess than your place could ever be, but he makes the effort and after a jog that strains at his calves more from the anxiety than the run, his knuckles rap on your door in jerky movements that feel like a stranger’s.

“Hi,” it’s watery, but it’s you on the other side of the thin space between the two of you and Suga can’t quite believe that you’re the one with the stammer and the nervous shaking in your hand. It takes more than he has, but he reaches out, and holds it between his own just to stop the trembling.

You still, for a moment, but with your tenuous grip on each other, he’s guided with undeserving gentleness onto the empty sofa.

“Sorry-“ you begin, and he’s startled that it’s coming from you and not him. “I didn’t make it easy for you to talk to me,” you smile after that, and Suga feels your breaking align with his own, “will you sit?”

There’s nothing that could keep him from obeying you. He perches on the edge of the seat he didn’t realize he missed, and Suga grimaces when he bids the words come to his lips, and finds the call ignored. He takes another deep breath, and although he’s sure that they’ll be lacking, he drums up his own to give you instead.

“I shouldn’t have avoided you,” his eyes drop to the slump your shoulders slide into, and he realizes that it must still hurt, “did I make you bruise?”

“Just a little,” you admit, “but it was an accident, Koushi. I told you, remember? Before you shut down and vanished.”

“Yeah, but-“

“You said  _sorry_ ,” you press on with a firm tone; Suga knows when he’s outmatched, “that was the first thing you said, so it’s okay, apology accepted, alright?”

He doubts that he’ll ever feel alright about being physically angry ever again, but in the face of such acceptance, there’s nothing he can do but capitulate, and clutches onto your hand as if it’s you who needs saving.

You only smile at the strength in his hold, and turn his hand over in yours to lace your fingers back together.


	54. Eating their s/o's favourite food with Kuroo and Tsukishima

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> ok but while im here i might as well request something ahahah. what abotu a cute scenario with kuroo and tsukki where their s/o eats the guys' favorite food in front of them ? maybe because they had an argument and she's really childish or idek adn they like chase her around omg so cute aaahh  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I feel like I maybe made this less fluffy by accident, but I hope you like it anyway. Thanks for your patience!_

To any onlooker, they’re a perfect couple; hands clasped tightly in each other’s, shoulders leaning in and bumping in hidden multitudes, and their cheerful smiles beaming a sunflower aura around them.

 **Kuroo**  supposes, grudgingly, that you are perfect. But sometimes, like today, you’re just a little piece of shit, and the hidden smirk behind the twist of your hands drums in that fact. He settles opposite Akaashi at the open table, and sighs dramatically when he feels a wet spot blooming underneath his left thigh. Akaashi doesn’t even look up from his study of the menu.

“Someone spilled water there earlier.”

“Right,” Kuroo huffs, “perfect.”

He’s not desperate enough to trust you yet when you offer to mop some of it up for him with a tissue. Handing you a similar looking menu instead, your hands are happily too occupied to give him anymore grief, deserved or not. He spies Bokuto watching the two of you bemusedly out of the corner of his eye, and his bottom lip trembling at the effort to keep his mouth shut about it, and rolls his eyes. He’s surrounded by complete asshats.

“Ready to order?” Your voice simmers with something that’s too sweet to be safe, but he can’t say no to the way your pinkie winds around his. Kuroo feels his face warm (ridiculous, frankly, it’s too past the honeymoon phase for him to be a teenager) and attempts to join in the conversation in his trademark mellow tone after the waitress walks away with their meals on jotted down on a pad.

At first, it’s appetizers. It’s just a small tray of seaweed and an assortment of salted nuts and vegetables, and let no man say that Kuroo Tetsurou doesn’t eat his vegetables. Or at least he most certainly tries, but he finds himself grabbing at air with his chopsticks eat time he reaches for something. A little bewildered, he glances around surreptitiously at the table, and then at his friends, who see to notice nothing and are eagerly engaging in conversation about a particularly large butt-shaped bush they found a few days earlier.

He supposes he can wait until his meal arrives. Kuroo doesn’t want to battle his apparently starving friends after all.

He begins to grow suspicious when his plate of curry arrives and it seems to be shrinking faster than expected. Like earlier, everyone’s eating, blissfully unaware of Kuroo’s individual suffering, but each time he shifts or glances away from his food, it seems to decrease in size just enough that it grates on his nerves. He’s not an idiot, but apparently, someone on his table is a master thief, and he’s not swayed towards your innocence no matter how softly you knead his thigh.

“How about no?” He hisses at you, but there’s no response, and Akaashi only looks up at him with an odd expression on his face and yours doesn’t flicker in the slightest. Then, you smile, and it makes his breath hitch in ways that assures you of your guilt. He frowns. “You never smile like that when you’re being nice.”

“I’m never nice,” you murmur happily, “and this is for you taking the last of my Kinder chocolate.”

“You said you’re on a  _diet_!”

“Uh… you guys alright?” Bokuto asks, but the shit-eating grin on his face is too obvious for words.

“We’re fine,” Kuroo answers smoothly, and reaches over to press a soft kiss against your lips. There’s a quiet ‘ew’ from the other side of the table, and yeah, it’s pretty weird to taste your udon in your saliva, but it’s worth it when he snatches the egg out of your bowl.

He knows he did good when your mouth crumples at the very noticeable absence of your favourite food. You let out a battle cry that almost shocks him out of his seat and you lunge over to clutch at his cheeks.

“It’s a pretty good tasting egg,” he laughs as he suffers through your ministrations.

“You took my  _egg_! Out of everything! And my Kinder!”

It doesn’t help when Bokuto picks up the egg on his own dish and in a show of loving bliss, feeds it to Kuroo by hand. The anguish on your face flavours the food to perfection, and the rest of the three troublemakers are quickly put out of commission from laughter.

Kuroo swallows his food, and you watch it go down his throat with growing misery, and he thinks that perhaps it’s always good to take a break before being beat to the ground a second time.

“Let’s drop by somewhere after we eat, okay?” He asks you knowingly.

You perk up at the sound of that, but the wariness still sets itself in the lines of your face. “Where?”

He smiles, and this time you’re the one who warms up, and unconsciously you find yourself pressed closer against his lean body as a natural reaction to his charm.

“We’ll get you some more chocolate,” he traces a finger along the line of your cheekbone, and mollified, you sink back into your seat with a small nod.

Akaashi shakes his head at the whole scene, and hides his smile behind a hand.

 

* * *

 

What’s new?  **Tsukishima** ’s greatest talent is being a dick, and if you thought that being drugged up on anesthesia would change that for at least a day, you were so, so wrong. In fact, where there used to be a sour pinch to his lips indicating that he was holding a biting comment well behind his lips, now they’re just flapping damn loose in the wind, and you haven’t had a second’s rest from his snark all day.

You wonder if it’s possible to put him under all the way, for as long as it takes. Maybe long enough for you to take a spa day to recuperate, because this is something the police should start training their cadets against- psychological torture.

“Flour? More carbs? What about your thighs?” He shoots them a glance and you smile behind brittle defenses. “I guess you aren’t worrying about their size anymore, huh.”

“Okay,” you say slowly, “no flour. No carbs.”

“ _Ookay_ ,” he imitates you poorly, sounding like the doped up man that he is, “then how are you going to make that new pie?”

“I’m not,” you sniff, “I’m going to make karaage.”

He has the decency to look scandalized, a hand reaching up to cup at his swollen cheeks. “ _No._ ”

“Yes.”

“But I can’t eat that!”

You pluck the bag of candy out of his hands and put it back on the shelf where it belongs. “That’s the point. I’m going to make your favourite food, and I’m going to eat it in front of you.”

“I’m calling the police.”

“Kei, you can’t call the police for dinner.”

“This is abuse! This is cruelty!”

If you were a smarter person, you’d have had the insight to film all this on your phone and use his terrible behavior to haunt him later when he’s back from whatever cloud he’s on, surfing through the waves of medicinal haze. You had felt sorry for him when you saw how poorly he looked after he had his wisdom teeth taken out right after the operation, but the doctor had released him early, saying that he was fine, and apparently Tsukishima took it upon himself to appoint himself the new emperor of your life and main pain in the ass. You really need to google how long painkillers last for. You’d rather sit through him grumpy than him borderline insane.

Still, you had to tactically hide your grin at his childish whine- he’d never let you live that down if he realized. One obstacle at a time here.

He trails after you without another word, and you snap a sneak pic of his pouty face when he’s not looking. You complete your rounds quickly before he actually starts to throw a tantrum in the middle of the supermarket, and the way home is a long, tiring walk of him listing all the reasons why you’re a horrible person and you should suffer soup with him out of empathy if you wanted to go to heaven. The only improvement when you get home is the lack of blistering heat, and you favour turning on the air conditioning at full blast than even responding to your boyfriend’s taunts.

Tsukishima finally falls silent when he sees you take out the chopping board and the ingredients. The reality of what you’re about to do seems to hit him with funeral-worthy solemnity, and the process is significantly easier and dare you say,  _fun_ , without a man-child bothering you, no matter how much you love him.

You grab his favourite bowl from the cupboard and ladle in rich soup, stewed since six in the morning, but he looks no happier in his seat by the dining table. Head collapsed in one hand, Tsukishima reverts back to his primary school days, staring grumpily at the freshly fried, steaming stack of karaage, and if he could sear the sauce into ash with his gaze alone, he would.

You take your seat opposite him with some rice and egg, and smile.

“Eat up, or you’ll be hungry later.”

He picks up his spoon, and dips it into the soup. You grab your chopsticks, and pick up a piece of chicken to press into your mouth. You watch as his throat gulps pure saliva, and the soup drips clumsily from his spoon.

“ _Please.”_  Tsukishima looks like he’s about to cry, but you can’t find it in you to feel the least bit sorry for him, not after all that mess at the supermarket.

You take another bite, and grin.

“Nope,” you answer, your lips popping at the ‘oh’ sound, and you think that’s what does it. Tsukishima leaps up poorly from his position and throws himself across the table, almost snatching the food out of your hands. You jolt backwards, feeling the fear of God thrust through you and you stare at him with wide eyes.

You don’t get a single moment to relax at all- sufficiently throwing you off kilter, Tsukishima takes the opportunity to slide an unfairly long leg to the left and zips over to your side at lightning speed. You dodge him just barely, but he follows you at breakneck speed until the two of you are chasing each other around the small table, food in your hand and your shrieks starting to sound like hysterical giggling.

“ _Got you,_ ” a hand snatches at the back of your shirt and you’re tugged backwards into a solid frame, the impact pushing the air out of your lungs. His limbs are everywhere around you, you’re not sure if he’s hugging you, trapping you, or literally imprisoning you, but he’s not even  _interested_ in you, just the piece of chicken dangling precariously on the end of your chopsticks.

Tsukishima looks right into your eyes before leaning forwards and eating it up in one go.

You’re slack jawed, but not for long, and still laughing- he’s almost laughing too, you swear- you reach up onto your tip toes to press a soft kiss against the corner of his mouth.

“You’re a moron,” you grin.

(You get your laugh later when the painkiller wears off, and he spends a good hour hating himself for eating crunchy food.)


	55. Plotless Yamaguchi S&M play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Explicit content, BDSM
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> i cant get the idea of a dom yama in bed out of my head; like not the type of dom kuroo or iwai would be but more of like a suga dom where he acts all sweet but hes actually a real sinner omg pls make this a scenario (fem pronouns)  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: The premise went somewhere so far that I’m not even sure if this can be an s/o fic anymore, but hey, it can be a good place even if it’s far, right? I hope you enjoy, and for what it’s worth, I listened to Pillowtalk by Zayn Malik the entire time while writing this._

_Hello there stranger, would this be your first time here? This is a special night for us, we’re open for public clientele, and I see there you’ve won a lucky ticket for an evening with our freckled boy with the sweet smile. Not to worry, all procedures will be well explained to you upon your engagement. Please leave your belongings at the entrance, and we hope you enjoy your stay._

* * *

His smile is delicious, a strawberry liqueur that invites you in for another dip with a soft smile. Your feet are no longer yours when the door closes behind you with a soft click, and you fall backwards onto the plush lining.  **YAMAGUCHI**  approaches, swift and silent, and asks you to call him Tadashi.

How could you not?

The sway of his hips, the arch of his hand that he lifts and presents to you like a gift; you take it, and he rewards you with a warm smile that flushes down your chest to your tailbone. Your toes curl, and he leads you by the hand to the open bed like children towards a candy shop.

“Let’s come up with a word,” he suggests softly, “I’d like to keep you safe. Safe means happy, no?”

The first word that comes to your lips is his name, and Tadashi laughs. It sounds like a sunrise licking at waves in a cool summer, and no more words come. His eyes gaze right into you, and he tells you he understands in two flickers of his lips. “How about ‘bat’? I’ve always been a bit scared of them. Would you like that as your word?”

You smile as if he’s just told you you’re his universe, and in that moment, you feel like you are with a hand your hips and another on your cheek. His thumb brushes the invisible lines along the hollow of your eyes, and you lean into the touch. He seems to like that, and he pulls you in closer to him.

His chest is firm, his waist trim and his thighs soft enough to knead, and you can feel your every curve fitting into his planes with a malleability only he can talk into you. You’re putty in his wandering hands, and he begins to shape you into his liking, beginning from your shoulders. His lips don’t touch yours. Hovering, and he keeps you arched into his hands and his face close enough to taste the freckles on his sun-kissed skin.

You flick out a tongue just to get a small taste of him, but he laughs and falls back with a sway that pulls you even further in. He presses a finger to your lips that you’re about to give in to and taste that instead, but he tugs your head back by your hair, so gentle that it feels like a massage, but his gaze is molten iron. His smile is firm, edged, and you can’t move.

There’s no moving from the control seeping through his pores and washing over your skin like slick, curving down your dips and your highs, and your insides- Tadashi smiles again, and licks a stripe across your unmoving lips.

“I’ll tell you what to do,” he whispers into your ear, and you dissolve into his grip, “and you listen. Shall we give that a try? You’ll like it, I promise.” There’s something that tells you that if Yamaguchi Tadashi, the freckled boy with the sweet smile, promises you the moon, you’ll have it dropped into your waiting hands in the form of a keychain on Christmas day.

“ _Yes_ ,” you say, and awash with your prayer, Tadashi blooms underneath your adoration.

“Good,” he says right back, and for a single moment, you are in the presence of a God and when he pulls on your hair once again, you fall with the motion like silk against stone. He lays you down on the bed with such tenderness that it only takes a closed wish to believe that you’re in love, he’s in love, and this is a form of worship required of you daily.

You stop noticing when his hands are tugging at your clothes, prying you out of them with practiced ease and you push further into him when you’re all heated skin, aching core, and he’s clothed in his beautiful shirt and slacks on top of you. His bare feet poke out beyond the fabric draping over his ankles, and he runs his toes up and down the back of your bare thigh, drawing your name in swirls.

“Does this feel good?” He hums. His lips are so close to your skin that you can feel his adam’s apple bobbing against the stretch of your abdomen, and the vibrations of his voice, pitched low just for your pleasure, tickles your belly button and sends goosebumps racing across your skin.

You don’t have to be held down by him to know when it’s not your turn yet to move. The effort is well worth it when he beams at you proudly, and your cheeks heat to unimaginable temperatures, matching the burn in the lower regions of your body that cries for something unmentioned.

You raise your wrists automatically above your head, afraid that if you let yourself go, you’ll reach down to touch him. That would disappoint him, and you’d do anything to keep that gorgeous smile exactly where it is on Tadashi’s angelic features. Nothing else belongs there, you believe, perhaps besides your own.

He rewards you with several, slow, licks along the visible edges of your abdominal muscles, the slurping sounds appreciative and generous. His hands don’t stop moving, grazing your sides with astonishing lightness and you’re torn between feeling ticklish and like you’re being worshipped, piece by piece. Taking you apart like a puzzle without having to even pass your hips. You feel his smile into your tummy, and cheekily, he dips the tip of his tongue in before hopping back and shifting lower.

There’s no way you can keep your eyes open now, not with the only thing that’s still on you separating him and something you’re too nervous to voice, but too shameless to deny. Nothing escapes him, and Tadashi raises his head just enough to speak.

“I’d like you to keep your eyes on me. There’s a pillow behind you if you get tired. Does that sound good?”

Without waiting for an undoubtedly inadequate reply, he dips in with his tongue, thick and lathering; not a prick of pain and all you can feel is warmth and the rustle of your panties against your skin. The lace scratches against you with every large movement he makes, but before you can even shift, he soothes the sensations away with the flat of his tongue, the tip prying here and there to dodge the harsher parts of the fabric.

You want to tell him to take them off for you, but his eyes keep you silent. All you’re allowed to do is sob, or gasp, and neither seems like a good use of energy when you could be gripping the sheets with your fists, pushing into his wicked mouth. When he laughs at your eagerness, the cry breaks free and you feel a gush of excitement rush out of you. His smirk tells you it’s on purpose, and with an intensity that keeps your heart racing, he leans forwards and dips past the edge of your underwear to give you a firm suck. He begins slowly, deep and heavy; drinking from a fountain in a desert, and it shifts into soft coaxing, then quick flicks up and down, and rubs inside you at erratic intervals.

It’s a new type of hell not to moan, but silence is what you offered, and silence is what you will continue to give. Your mouth falls open in a wordless cry, and Tadashi murmurs a soft  _good girl_  right into you and reaches up with a padded thumb to rub at your clit.

Your body offers everything it can, as does your mind, when the two feelings combine- one slow, one fast, and exchanging until speed means nothing but time to you and the endlessness of the burn that shoots up and down your body like pulses. You feel it coming, but you don’t want to orgasm: this is heaven, and if there’s an end to eternity, it’s meaningless to you.

Still, your silence is well rewarded. Your lip is almost bloody from the chewing and the biting on it to keep your quiet, and Tadashi feels the way you shudder and convulse; he stops right before you’re about to lose yourself, sliding back and you can see your slick dripping off his lips and down his chin and soaking his collar. You blush at your audacity, and he smiles again. This one’s knowing, like you’re sharing a secret together, and you’re flush underneath his praising look.

“You’re the best,” he croons at you, making his way back up to your rosy cheeks, “such a good girl. You listen so well, doesn’t it feel nice? I want to keep you happy, let you know when you deserve a treat because you’re such a wonderful listener. It must have been hard, hm?”

It makes no sense to you, but you feel your cheeks grow wet, and you realize belatedly when you’re already nodding that you’re crying. It’s uncontrollable, just like your love for this man in front of you who treats you like you’re a piece of his soul, and when he pulls off the tie, draped loosely around his neck, you don’t question it. There isn’t a breath of doubt or distance when he reaches up- not before giving you a soft, reassuring smile- to tie one of your feet to one bedpost. It’s a metal frame, but the thought of disobeying is so far from your mind that you don’t even consider testing its strength.

He traces soft patterns into your palms before moving at all, and your fingers curl around his like a child pulls on their mother’s hands, and that brings out a small giggle that makes your chest swell in its terrible cage. “You’re lovely,” he kisses your cheek fondly, and you’d hand yourself over to him only if he’d asked.

Tadashi sits backwards on his thighs and takes your free leg in both his hands, running his hands over it with reverence. His eyes aren’t focused on you, only the way your thigh begins past the dip of your knee, but it’s still molten enough to keep you pliant right where he wants you. It doesn’t take long for his wandering ministrations to reach your slick again, and he dips a finger into it experimentally.

You arch, and thrust into it, unable to hold back from the temptation.

He pulls away immediately, the thick brows knitting together with displeasure and he reaches up to wipe the moisture on your neck like toilet paper.

“Not without me telling you to, please,” he shakes his head and his eyes grow almost watery and cold at the same time. A breath stops halfway up your throat and stays lodged there in anticipation. “I’m going to have to scold you for that now.”

He doesn’t, not really. Such a mouth isn’t built for talking, it’s built for ordering, and your punishment is dealt swiftly as he pushes into you in one swift moment that leaves you winded. You had no clue when he had unbuckled the tailored pants of his, but you almost break out into laughter at how perfect this man is. He curves slightly to the right, the stretch of your unprepared entrance pulling at your muscles in all the right ways. You can feel the sting of a sudden penetration at the back of your cervix, and your pelvis throbs from the intrusion, but there’s no way it can be unwelcome.

This is simultaneously the sorest you’ve ever felt, yet you wouldn’t trade this for any amount of preparation. Tadashi doesn’t prepare you for his pushes either, and pulls out almost completely before thrusting back in at full strength, shifting you almost a foot higher on the bed. The tie tugs at your ankle, and he pulls your free one even higher into the air until you’re forming an L-shape, helpless to however he wants to position you.

You know better to make much noise, but all the moans build up somewhere in your chest and in the back of your mind. Tadashi pulls out, and thrusts, again and again and again. The curve of him fails not even once to press against the edge of your cervix where it teases the pad of your prostate, and with each nudge at he almost-reaches the very maximum of your length, you feel more and more like bursting. Erupting. Releasing everything felt like nirvana, but you didn’t want to see his disappointed expression again. It stays in, but this is a little death you’re dying each time he touches you in places undiscovered.

“Good girl,” you hear him praise you again, and he reaches down with a sweaty, warm hand and nudges at your clit with the heel of his hand.

It only takes two more thrusts, reckless shoving of his hips into the dip of yours; messy smears and harsh rubbing against your nub before you’re starting to see white, before you even feel yourself reaching your limit.

Even in orgasm, the hardest you’ve ever come until you think you’re going to have to scream and pass out, your voice remains locked behind your love for him and the only thing that falls out is a soundless  _Tadashi_  that your lips cry out.

“You love me,” he commands, tells, pleads,  _sings_  to you, and your reply is to clench harder around him, desperate to hear his own cries of pleasure. It only takes a small, strained smile for him to harden even further inside you and you feel his pulses; they’re spastic, irrational and everything that he hasn’t been, and you milk it for every moment you have. This is the Tadashi you’ll never see again, and with each spurt you’re learning something new about him that’ll never leave.

It takes him a while, but when the both of you are finished, he’s breathing as heavily as you are, and the smiles one your faces mirror each other in exquisite intimacy. Another shared secret, and this time you allow yourself to laugh out loud, and with a grin that calls out love into the darkness, he lowers himself onto you and presses a kiss to your lips.

The tie is off your leg, you’re free, and the kiss feels like unmarked chains that will trace your steps out of the room when it’s finally your time to leave.

He sees your expression, whatever it may be, and Tadashi lets his hands make its way lazily over your body yet again, open and vulnerable to his every desire. However, it’s only one person’s desire he’s serving tonight.

“You should get some rest,” he murmurs, brushing a stray lock of hair back from your sweat-slicked forehead, “we’ve got a long night ahead of us if you’d like to play some more.”

It warms you in entirely different ways when he doesn’t pull back from your form underneath his chin, arms wrapped securely around you like a blanket of his own and you let yourself fall into an easy sleep against his heartbeat. He was right, there would be a long night, and if letting yourself go for a while would make the best of it, you figured that there were worse things to wake up to than his sweet smile, and chocolate freckles.


	56. Kuroo comforts s/o with self esteem issues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> heyyy :d first of all i love your blog so much, and i want to write like you one day. anyways, can i request a scenario where kuroo's s/o is chubby and has self-esteem issues, so she finally breaks down in front of kuroo and kuroo just keeps telling her she's beautiful and that he loves her. god, i hope this made sense ;-;. but thanks in advance! <3  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Thank you for your lovely comment! I hope this lives up to what you wanted, and thank you for your patience. :)_

“Hey, hey.” You look up from the crumpled shirt in your hands to Kuroo’s soft little smile. You sniff, hard.

“I don’t like this,” you say, and he nods. “I’m pretty sad, aren’t I?”

“Well, you’re allowed to be,” he frowns slightly, but his voice stays soothing. He kneels in front of you to meet your eyes, and gently tugs at the shirt in your fists. Your grip loosens, and Kuroo pulls a part of it so you two can share.

“Have you washed this recently?” He asks, voice muffled. You snort, and even though half his face is hidden in the shirt along with you, you can tell that he’s proud of having made you laugh.

“No. It’s yours, anyway. What have you been doing with it?”

“Nothing dirtier than wiping my snot, I promise,” he raises an eyebrow accusingly at you, and you roll your eyes.

“I found it. It’s mine now. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Kuroo grins- you can tell by the way his eyes thin and crease into little feline curves. “Atta girl.”

The shirt is big, and it covers most of your front and quite a lot of your thighs. Even with Kuroo sharing it, you can’t see a lot of your body right now and that comforts you. Exposure therapy had never worked as well as you’d like- it just led to, well, this.

“Do you feel like sharing your thoughts with me?”

He asks that every time with the exact same wording. You’ve said yes before, and you’ve said no. He never pushes, no matter your answer. Today’s not so bad a day, so you nod.

Kuroo curls a hand over yours before you begin.

“It’s the same old,” you struggle, “you’ve heard all this before.” He has. But he’s asking again anyway, and you feel a bit mean for hiding behind your words when it’s not his fault. Kuroo’s patience doesn’t waver for a single moment, and his grip tightens in solidarity with yours.

“I just feel ugly today.”

“Okay,” he nods. You’re not meeting his eyes.

“It piled up. I know there are better parts of me, and it’s not like I crumble from seeing pretty girls on the streets, but I didn’t look how I wanted in my clothes when I tried them out. I was too scared to weigh myself afterwards, and then I just saw all those  _couples_ walking around-” you curl up further into yourself from what you’re about to admit. “I saw you on campus and you were really popular, as always.”

“Not as much as you think. I get asked for Oikawa’s number a lot.”

“Clearly you need to do something about your bedhead, then.”

“Oh? Now you just want me to tell my groupies I’m taken.”

“Don’t you?” There’s no hiding the sudden tremble of your bottom lip, the sudden flush of self-loathing that leaves you trembling like a leaf. Blown off your branch from a little gust of normality. “Honestly sometimes I- I don’t understand how you can want to be with me. How do you put up with this?  _I_ can’t put up with this. I’m  _sick to death_  of feeling so gross all the time, but it doesn’t care what I think, it comes anyway. Say, do you believe in that saying about loving yourself or nobody else can or something? I really think that sometimes. Don’t you want someone who picks you up instead of you having to clean up afterwards instead?”

“Hey-”

“-You looked  _really good_ with those girls, Kuroo. You match with tall, beautiful people because you’re tall and beautiful. Did you know that was my first thought? That I wouldn’t even blame you if you fell for someone else because how can two people who look so fitting possibly be bad? Who am I to stand in the way?”

“ _Hey_ -”

“-And the cherry on top of my fabulous existence is how  _sick_ I am of being myself. It takes so much energy to ignore my body, to tell myself that I’m more than my meatsuit, but the stupid truth is that my meatsuit  _matters_ , and the fact that I’m fat and ugly won’t change. Just because I keep on telling myself that I’m funny or am really good with music lyrics doesn’t change the fact that I can’t buy the clothes I want. I can’t stand and admire my legs, I can’t look the way I want- I’ll never have a day where I’m happy with my appearance rather than not minding it, and all that just  _changes_   _my life_. People will look at us on the street and think ‘why is that tall, good-looking guy going out with a fucking gremlin?’ and that’s so much worse than just being ugly on my own, Kuroo.”

There’s a sudden cliff of a silence that both of you tumble off. Silence that seems more like the absence of sound rather than a meaningful quiet, and it hits you like a ten foot drop how loud you’ve been. You might as well been wailing, and the embarrassment of it leaves you pushing your face further into the shirt.

Kuroo speaks up first, sensing that you’ve said all you’ve to say.

“It’s worse today, huh.”

“Yup.”

He takes a deep breath. “I can’t change what people think, and I can’t change what you think, although I can try. But I can tell you what  _I_ think. Would you like to hear?”

You nod minutely.

“I think you’re a damn amazing person. Do you look like a model? No. But do I care?  _Not one bit_. You’re not unhealthy, and that’s all I care about. I love the way you look, because I love you; you’re a whole package, I can’t just love one thing and not the other. You  _are_  funny, and you are freakishly good at music lyrics, yeah, and I wouldn’t exchange that for six miles of leg, because legs can’t make me laugh, but you can.”

“Don’t you get tired of telling me things that I never believe?”

You almost flinch at the unimpressed look he gives you. “That’s why I keep saying them, so that one day you’ll end up believing them whether you want to or not. I’m not finished though.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Okay. So I wanna say, from a very objective perspective, that you look  _fine_. People aren’t going to walk by and think that I’m walking my niece or something, so don’t you worry about that- we look like a typical, boring couple. If anything, they’re going to think you’re cute, because have you seen your own smile? You’re like a miniature sunset when you break out of your grumpy exterior and grin like an idiot.”

You smack him half-heartedly, but Kuroo just smirks.

“Seriously though, you’re not bringing me down. I don’t think that, nobody else thinks that. We’re good together, right?”

“Right,” you mumble.

He nods, point made. “So you’ve turned me off everyone else. I’m literally you-sexual now, so thinking that I look great with anyone else isn’t going to change the fact that I’m never going to be happy with them because you’re right here where I want you to be.” His lips soften, and so do his eyes, “you want to be here, don’t you?”

“..I do,” you admit slowly, a blush searing itself on your cheeks like a forge in winter.

“Thank god,” Kuroo smiles. “Just so you don’t forget this soon, I’m going to say it again.  _I love you_.” You don’t respond, your face still buried into cloth, and Kuroo raises an eyebrow. “I loooooove you. Loooooooove with six hundred different hearts in magenta, ruby-”

“-Oh alright, shut up, you.” Your reluctant smile betrays you, and Kuroo relaxes.

“But hey, we’re in this together. If you don’t like the way you look, or if you want to look however you wish you did, I’ll help you, alright? If you want to lose weight, I’ll support you. If you want to gain weight, I’ll stuff you. I just want you to be happy with you, and I’ll do whatever it takes.”

There’s a quick pause, and Kuroo adds, “for the record though, I don’t believe in that dumb quote. I’m no expert on love but it doesn’t make sense that there’s got to be an order to how we love. We love whatever we want, whenever we want, right? I don’t have to kiss myself goodnight to know that I’m smitten with you.” He says with a sly grin.

The daft bastard, he knows exactly what to say to make you turn even redder, and most of your face has disappeared from his line of sight as you hide more and more.

“Jesus, Kuroo. How can you say those things without being really embarrassed?”

“Oh, I do,” he sniggers, “it just kicks in real late at night.”

“You’re weird.”

“I’m weird,” he agrees sagely.

Sometimes, you think to yourself, when you’re at your lowest, it’s someone else’s belief in you that keeps you going. No matter how sad that might sound, it’s more than a lot of other people have, and after all, another day is all you need.

The thought makes you smile, even if just a sliver of one, and Kuroo tilts his head in puzzlement.

“What are you smiling at?”

“Just you,” you smile some more, “and me. Like this. We’re really dumb.”

“I am very intelligent, I’ll have you know,” but he’s about two seconds away from cracking up, which makes it very hard for you to believe him.

You say nothing. Kuroo slowly shifts closer to you, his laughter simmering low into something gentler, more intense, and before you know it, he’s tugged the shirt out of your hands. He guides your empty palms onto the shirt he’s wearing himself, and runs his fingers through your hair as you bury your face into his chest.

“Feeling a bit better?” He asks, voice an intimate whisper.

“Yes,” you find yourself answering honestly, “is it okay if I stay like this for a bit?”

“As long as you like,” Kuroo smiles, “as long as you like.”


	57. Bokuroo with a little Satanic flavouring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An old homely grandmother accidentally summons a demon. She mistakes him for her Gothic-phase teenage grandson and takes care of him. The demon decides to stay at his new home.

“Grandma, what the fuck.”

“ _Language_ , Tetsurou,” his grandmother scolds goodnaturedly.

Kuroo stares and stares and stares, because seriously,  _what the fuck, grandma._

“Hey hey!” The man beaming behind her waves a hand enthusiastically in greeting. “Nice house!”

“It’s uh, not mine.” Kuroo says awkwardly, and pats his grandma gently on the shoulder.

“Thank you, dear,” she also beams.

Why the fuck is everyone beaming, Kuroo thinks, what is so great about this. The attic is a bit of a steep descent, and at his grandmother’s age, she really shouldn’t be climbing up and down with those knees.

“I got it,” the man and his incredibly thick arms literally block the way when Kuroo moves to lend his grandma an arm.

“Right,” Kuroo grits. It’s  _my_  grandmother, he thinks viciously, but the guy looks so damn happy it’d be like kicking a puppy.

‘The guy’ is a bit of an understatement, to be quite honest. Maybe grandma’s just left her specs at the kitchen table again, but those weird horns- not to mention the black and white hair- are definitely not ‘guy’-like. They’re… evil-like, and Kuroo is really worried about his grandmother.

Those claws don’t look too comfortable either, but her thick jumper solves that problem. At least he’s got proper feet, Kuroo supposes, it’d be a bit awkward getting about with hooves.

“Satan?”

Surprisingly, his grandmother pipes up first.

“Oh Tetsu, I thought you weren’t religious!”

He blinks, because, once again, what the fuck, grandma. “I’m not.” He glances at the happy non-human, and rethinks his answer. “Okay, maybe just a little. Or maybe I’m just really into cosplay.”

“Oooh, so you’re a geek,” the dude sniggers, and Kuroo considers kicking him right down the stairs.

“Grandma,” he opts to say instead, “have you noticed that our guest has horns?”

She’s all the way down by now, and Kuroo’s gotta admit that this fellow has terrific efficiency when it comes to assisting the elderly.

“He’s always got strange hair, hasn’t he, Tetsu? I should count myself lucky it isn’t bright pink this time! Ohohoho!” His grandmother chortles, and the guy laughs along with her.

“ _Who? You two meet often?_ ”

“Don’t be silly, it’s your cousin!”

“Grandma-”

“Isn’t he always wearing those terribly odd outfits? It’s hard to understand youth nowadays, but I suppose you can wear whatever makes you happy. I was thinking of clearing up the attic, and to think that I found your cousin up there already! Why didn’t you tell me he’d come by?”

“Well, I-”

“Be a dear and fetch us some water, would you? It was quite stuffy up there, and we earned a break.” She pats the guy fondly without looking, and Mr. Horns nods empathetically.

“It was pretty messy. It’s all cleared up now, though,” he adds.

Kuroo sighs. Maybe he’ll start going to church this sunday.

“Alright.”

With his height, it’s nothing for him to speed his way to the ground floor, and Kuroo waits in the living room with two cups of water and one glass of wine. He’s going to need that.

“Cousin’s sixteen, you know.” He points out when his grandmother finally pops her head around the corner.

Finally, she gives the man next to her a good long peer, and then sighs. “They do grow up awfully fast.”

“Not  _that_ fast, grandma.” This guy’s a good foot taller than his cousin, looking a good five years older too- around Kuroo’s age, if he’s to be honest. It doesn’t seem like it matters, however, and he hands both of them their drinks. The guy smiles his thanks, and Kuroo feels a tad blinded by the force of that smile.

Goths definitely don’t smile he wants to say, but his grandmother’s already moved to the kitchen and pulling out various vegetables out of their fridge.

“Your parents are coming home soon, so you two better come down later and help set the table for dinner!”

“Yes, grandma,” they both answer in unison.

Kuroo gives the guy the stink eye and drags him into his room the moment his grandmother starts to begin chopping.

“She’s not your grandma. She’s  _my_  grandma.”

“Yeah,” the guy grins, utterly unperturbed by Kuroo’s glare, “but I wish she was mine too. She’s really nice, isn’t she?”

“Well, yeah. She’s cool.”

“You still live with her?”

“No,” and Kuroo feels mildly offended at being taken for a teenager, “she’s living with my parents while her apartment is getting renovated. I’m just visiting for the holidays.”

“Oh,” the guy nods eagerly, “that’s cool.”

“Sure.”

The silence is very, very odd, and Kuroo fiddles with his fingers.

“Want a seat?”

“Yes, thanks.” The guy pulls out the chair from under the desk and spins around in it like a kid. And spins. And spins, and  _spins_. It takes Kuroo several long seconds to notice that there is no friction or gravity affecting the chair in this very moment. He’s just  _spinning_ , like he’s in a vacuum or something. Inertia in action.

“So are you Satan?”

“Nah.” He’s still fucking spinning. “We’re chill though. He doesn’t like new places very much.”

“And you do?”

“Yeah! It gets boring sitting in the same place all the time. Besides,” he grins, and looks a bit mad doing it, “I get to meet people like your grandma, so it’s all worth the trouble.”

“…The trouble?”

“I say trouble, but it’s usually the summoner who has the most work. I just push my way through.”

“My grandma doesn’t know how to summon things.” Kuroo takes a good look at the spinning monstrosity. “Demons,” he amends, and it seems to be the right term when the guy brightens up.

“That’s me! I guess she must’ve knocked the right thing over, ‘cus there was definitely a summoning circle just waiting to be completed up there.”

“What the  _fuck_. What kind of weirdo lived here before my parents?”

“Dunno,” the guy shrugs. “My name’s Bokuto, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

“Will you take my soul if I tell you my name?”

Bokuto grins and stops spinning. “Only if you barter it away. I can’t do shit without your consent.”

Kuroo nods. “I’m Kuroo.”

“ _Hey,_  sounds like a name of a demon.”

“Yeah, well maybe we should switch places,” Kuroo says drily, “seeing as you’re so happy with my grandma.”

“She’s  _nice_.”

“Yeah I  _know_.”

They sort of sit and stare at each other for a bit before Bokuto starts to crack up, and Kuroo follows until his sides hurt.

“What the  _fuck_  is with today,” Kuroo gasps between laughter. Bokuto has a nice laugh, his mind supplies helpfully, like rich chocolate with citrus flavouring.

“You’ve got a nice laugh too,” Bokuto says.

“Wha-! Stop that!”

“Sorry!” He actually looks chastised, and but Kuroo’s heart is still beating a mile a minute. From fear? From embarrassment? ‘Tis a mystery for the ages. “I just do it by accident, kinda like a reflex.” Bokuto lowers his head until he’s looking into his open palms. “I’ll try not to do it again.”

“I- yeah, it’s okay. It’s just kinda… privacy, y’know?”

“Mhmm,” Bokuto nods, still deflated.

Kuroo sighs. He reaches out with his foot and drags the chair closer to where he is on the bed. Bokuto doesn’t seem to notice that he’s moving, oddly enough.

“I don’t hate you or anything, you don’t have to sulk.”

“Okay.” Bokuto looks a bit less miserable, and Kuroo wonders what he must’ve been told in the past for him to have such a big reaction. He doesn’t ask. “I meant it,” Bokuto adds slowly, “you do have a nice laugh. If I’m chocolate, then you’re cake. Or a really big cat.”

“Oh, er, thanks.” Kuroo blushes violently, and once Bokuto looks up enough to see it, he does too.

Two dudes, just, sitting in a small room, blushing at each other. Kuroo clears his throat nervously.

“It’s uh, we should get going, it’s almost dinner-”

“ _Kids!_ ” His grandmother’s voice floats through the open doorway. “Start getting your bums down here!”

Kuroo gets to his feet, and Bokuto follows.

They reach the top of the stairs and before Kuroo takes the first step, Bokuto reaches out and tugs him back by the sleeve.

“You- do you mind me being here?” Bokuto asks, his sharp teeth worrying his bottom lip. “I know I just popped up out of nowhere, but if you’re uncomfortable then I can go, I don’t mind. If you don’t wanna share your grandma, that’s okay too.”

Kuroo twists his arm so his fingers run lightly over Bokuto’s hand.

“I don’t mind. It’s just not everyday I meet demons out of my attic.” Bokuto begins to smile. “If you’re staying, you’re welcome to share my room. We can watch something, or… something…” Kuroo finishes weakly, feeling more embarrassed than he’s been since prom night years ago.

“Okay,” Bokuto looks much happier already. He hops forwards with a little jump and scarpers down the stairs. “Race you down!”

“You  _cheated_ ,” Kuroo hollers and throws himself down after Bokuto. They tumble messily into the living room where his grandmother is putting the finishing touches on her fish.

“There you two are.” She turns around to face Bokuto, waving her spatula in the air. “I forgot to ask, dear, is miso and seafood alright with you? I’m afraid human meat is hard to find at a moment’s notice.”

“Miso’s fine,” Bokuto answers happily.

She nods, satisfied, and adds some salt to the mackerel.

Kuroo breathes in deeply. “ _What the fuck_ , grandma.”


	58. Kuroo with an s/o who has toxic friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hi, big fan of your writing! how about a scenario where kuroo's crush, soon to be gf, is friends with toxic people? like she realizes deep down that they're bad people to be around, but she ignores it because she's scared of being alone. but then he confronts her about it telling her that she doesn't need to be scared because she'll always have him? what i mean by toxic is that her friends talk about other people, badmouthing them, and her excuse is that she’s not scared of confronting them, just of being alone. thank you!   
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Maybe this is slightly different from how you imagined it would be, and I’m sorry about that. I just couldn’t help but realize that there’s so much more than romance going on in this, because it’s a serious issue, and nobody really talks about it much. I think Kuroo’s the type who would be solemn, blunt, and essential. Anyway, I hope you enjoy; I did put some fluff in there, so don’t worry. :) The song I listened to this time is Adele’s Turning Tables._

You’re standing alone, on a high ledge, trapped between a cliff and an ocean. Which do you choose? It’s crumbling, it’s crumbling. You have a lifetime to feel things give way from under you.

They’re not so different to you. That’s a good reason, right? You’re not so different, no matter how much you think yourself to be. At the end of the day, you’re the one with your phone in your hand, tapping away asinine remarks on your chatroom with your equally asinine friends.

You put your phone down only after it’s been an hour; your attendance has been noted, and you’re free to choose what you want to do now. The clicking of your phone locking itself feels like locking the part of you away into a digital device that will always have some record of what an asshole you can be when you want to be. You’d throw it against the wall and watch it crack, but that wouldn’t change anything- nothing you want changed, so it stays where it is on your desk.

You’ve been avoiding so many things, and the gravel underneath you cracks some more, giving way and crumbling into the endless expanse that is the unfathomable underneath your high place. A ringtone sounds, and it’s the silly tune of a kid’s show. Kuroo’s calling you, and you ignore that too.

“I’m outside your door,” his voice calls from outside your door, and just this once, you curse living alone. You didn’t have a mother who could open the door and tell him that you’re not here. There’d be no point. He knows exactly where you are, because he’s like that. And you’re like this.

Your steps are heavy and they drag you to the doorknob. You turn it, and he’s standing there with a phone in hand and an inscrutable gaze that makes you look away.

“Come in,” you mumble, and you retrace your steps back to your room as if you hadn’t moved at all.

He follows, silent. He waits for you to take your seat on the bed before settling himself in the chair by your desk, his legs crossed and body leaned forwards.

“Has it been that bad that you’re not messaging me back anymore?”

“I’m not-“ you sigh, pushing your face into your blankets, “that’s not what I mean by it. You know that.”

“I know,” he answers, “but it doesn’t mean that it’s not what it is.”

“I can guess what you’re going to tell me.”

He laughs. It’s a dark sound, full of worry, and it wraps around your gut like a noose.

“I’m going to tell you anyway.” He sounds oddly kind for someone who’s been left on radio silence for several days. You find it hard to believe he doesn’t mind. “Will you finally talk to them? Will you finally admit that you don’t like this?”

“What if I do? What if this is who I really am- someone mean just because all my friends are mean, this weak little girl who’s too afraid of being alone to be someone she actually likes?”

“Well? Are you?”

You blink, confused. “I- maybe.”

“Do you like who you are now, scared little girl?”

“Can’t say I do, really.” You huff out a laugh, like a little cloud of sarcasm that rains bitterness on cool summer days.

Kuroo looks nothing near satisfied, you’re surprised to find. Just leaning backwards into the backrest with an understanding twist of his mouth. “If you don’t, and this is who you are, then why not change?”

“Because change isn’t just change,” you groan, “it’s doing something and not knowing if it’ll work out. Kuroo, I might not have any friends after this- and no matter how hard I try I’m never going to be a confident little girl, so I can’t just, I don’t know, text them a ‘fuck you all’ and leave it at that!”

“So you’re afraid of being alone?” He murmurs.

“Everyone’s afraid of being alone.” You reply.

The twist of his mouth- the closest thing to his eyes that you can bring yourself to look at- turns a little sad, a little funny, and for a moment you think that he might be sick.

“Don’t you feel alone anyway?” He asks with a smile that hurts you, “isn’t it worse to feel alone surrounded by people?”

You don’t have a reply for that.

“I’m not much,” he says with his eyes downcast and a humble shrug, “but I’m here.”

If he were any closer- if you were any braver, you’d reach out and take his hand. Maybe it’s just you, maybe it’s the dimming light from your window, but something tells you that it’s shaking. You don’t know why, and the Kuroo you know never shakes. He’s always right there whenever you need him, and there the most when you don’t deserve him.

“I’m sorry,” the words are sluggish on your tongue, like a drug addict in his first moments of lucidity, “I must be such a disappointment all the time.”

Kuroo shakes his head.

“I’m… I’m not asking you for anything. I just want to you be less miserable. Because you do. Look miserable. I just think that… if it makes you brighten up if you finally get to be yourself, it’s worth the risk, sort of.”

“You’re right, of course,” you laugh, “you’re always right when I’m wrong.”

“That’s what you keep me around for,” he grins.

It’s not true. It’s you who wonders why he keeps you around- why he’d even bother, because you’ve given him more than ample opportunity to judge the heck out of you but he hasn’t. Not once, and in fact- well, he’s here, isn’t he?

“I’m here for you,” he says, almost as if he can read your thoughts, “I can’t say forever because I can’t promise things that I don’t know if we’ll be able to keep, but I’m here. Right now, and for the foreseeable future.”

There’s something left unsaid in the way his sentence drops off the edge, and something tells you that you know what it is, but neither of you bring it up. It’s not the right time, and there’s more to life, more to friendship and more to love than confessions. No matter what will happen, you know that he’s changed your life, and that’s more than enough forever than you’ll need.

“So you don’t have to be afraid of being alone, whatever happens. Maybe I’ll finally let my friends meet you, eh?”

“Oh? Have I been locked up or something?”

“Or something,” he grins again, and you laugh when he tosses your phone to you. “Your move.”

It’s a checkmate this time, you guess. The message is surprisingly easy to type, your fingers moving across the words like you’ve been dreaming them, and although pressing enter takes several minutes- Kuroo offers you a supportive smile and then proceeds to stare determinedly at your desk for the remaining time- it doesn’t feel as heavy as you’d thought it might.

It’s another message you’ll never be able to take back, but this is the first one that comes from you. The chatroom alights with messages, a blitz of buzzing and notifications, but you put your phone to one side. You can deal with the aftermath later- right now is Kuroo’s proud smile in front of you, and your shoulders are lighter than they’ve been in years.

“Hungry?” He asks.

“Famished,” you smile. His hand brushes over yours when he hands you your coat, and there’s something inextinguishable in the way your chest burns and your breathing lightens, knowing that you’ve earned the right to blush at the gesture with your head held high.


	59. Aokigahara forest with Lev and Bokuto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Suicide
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hi, i really love all your angst scenarios and was wondering if i could request one? what would lev and bokuto do if their s/o who was on the chubbier side and had bad insecurities saw the guys talking to a girl and got the wrong idea then ran away from home to go into the aokigahara forest to run away from their problems and the guys don't realize they're missing until a day later so they go out to look for her? please and thank you ^^  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: No holds barred on the angst department. I decided to take this seriously: when your significant other decides to run into a forest famous for suicides (and all that it implies), and you can do nothing but search. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy it, even if it’s a little somber._

Everyone you’ve ever met have talked about the forest like a ghost, an empty, cursed entity, singing the song of sirens and luring young men and women into its grasp like a spider web. To you, it feels nothing like a web at all. The leaves are too damp underneath your bare feet for there to be any crunching, the trunks too close together for you to see past the gentle fog caressing your skin.

For the first time in a long time, you feel welcome, this collection of lonely souls and trees that have seen the worst of humanity. You’re not running, you’re walking, and time seems to let you know that it’s passing by slowly without you from the sounds of the birds.

It’s a quiet afternoon, and you’ve lost track of how long you’ve been wandering.

The worn hoodie around your shoulders is probably the only good decision you’ve made in days, but what simmers in you doesn’t feel like regret. It feels like safety, like bubble wrap, and although you’re so alone you can hear your own breathing out here, you feel more like a person than ever.

Your makeshift camp a few feet behind you, you leave readily behind, a small fruit in your hand for the endless, pointless journey. It still hurts, your chest still heaves underneath an invisible weight, but you can’t see any of it right now. There are no parents, no grades, no friends, no  _mirror_ : it needn’t have to be reflective. It’s faster to see what you aren’t, what you could have been, when you look at  **Bokuto**  around people as blinding as he is.

She  _was_  beautiful, you confess to yourself with a spiritual sort of ease, and it’s only natural. Beautiful things gravitate to beautiful things; such is the natural order of the universe, and you’re an anomaly that you can’t forgive.

 _Bokuto_ , he makes you forget a lot of things, things that you shouldn’t forget and come back to haunt you when he’s gone. When that undiscerning, brilliant smile is turned onto more deserving recipients and you crumble, because it’s the only thing left for you to do.

The fog lessens around you like a veil being pulled back, and for a moment your heart sings from the kindness of a forest that has only known death; death, but amid all this life. You take a seat underneath a small dip in the ground, a large rock becoming a temporary shelter as you gather your thoughts.

It’s too easy to forget that you’ve left. How long would it take for your parents to call the police? Would they miss you? Would they miss  _you_? Would your friends notice? Would your phone be found? Would Bokuto be sad?

He shouldn’t, you think, he should fall back into the order of the universe. It doesn’t even hurt much when you perch on any assortment of branches or trunks, your roundness padding most of the pressure and you can’t even decide whether to feel disgusted, or pleased, in a strange, hysterical sort of way.

Hysterical is the first word you choose when you begin to hear twigs snapping and a loud crashing through the woods near you. Your first instinct is to leap up and search for an escape, but you only jerk forwards once, and sit back down. With your size, it would be impossible to dodge whatever wanted to make a meal out of you. You weren’t a lithe runner on track and field, and you didn’t exercise.

It’s rather fitting, isn’t it? This was the woods of the suicidal, and here you were, finally fitting in. You’re aware there’s a soft smile on your face, and you sit, and wait.

“ _It’s you!_ ” You freeze. This was a voice you knew, the only possible voice that could have made it this far alone without any help at all. The voice you didn’t want to hear, and how undeniably  _alive_  it sounds scars you.

His hair appears first, white and black against the cool greens and browns, and the rest of him follows, all muscle and desperation that unnerves you despite your zen. Bokuto’s golden eyes are blazing with unrestrained frenzy when he finally gets an unobstructed view of you, and you’ve never felt so unattractive in your life.

“Y-you,” he huffs, fists trembling by his sides, “t-that isn’t nearly enough clothing! Are you warm? H-how long have you been here? Why didn’t you call me?” All the questions come at the same time, and your mind is flooded with the fact that  _he still cares_ , and God forgive you for your weakness but you’re crying and you don’t give a damn about stopping yourself.

Bokuto cuts himself off when he sees the big, fat tears roll down your cheeks and he starts towards you like a man on a mission. He’s not wearing much himself, but he takes off whatever top he does have on, and you’re wrapped with an extra three layers without even a word spoken. You’re melting before you know it, and he’s holding you to his chest, fingers gripping onto you like his anchor.

“You’re breathing really hard,” you mutter unhelpfully, and he squeezes you in retaliation.

“Of  _course_ , I had to run all the way here! It took me  _hours_ , and I have to get back before sunset otherwise your parents will start asking people questions- did you know how many strings I had to pull to save your ass from them?” Bokuto rarely curses at you, but you take it with silence. You deserve it this time, and no amount of cursing can cover up how much more he’s shaking compared to you.

He doesn’t fit in, the forest seems to cry, and the man around you is the most colour, most life to be found in miles. You don’t like how the fog laps at his ankles, nor the way the empty wind blows against his hair and pulls down any stray locks it can get a hold of. It’s trying to suck Bokuto away, but all that he is, he’s giving it all to you in his grip.

“You- you don’t fit in here,” and it sounds a lot worse aloud than it did in your head, but Bokuto only nods against your head, his chin bumping on the crown of your head.

“I… I don’t like the way it feels like it wants to take me,” he says quietly, and you press your arms around him too, “but I found you, so I’m okay with that.”

You guess that there wasn’t much left of you to suck away to begin with. The forest knows what’s theirs, without lifting a finger.

“We should get you out of here,” you whisper, “it’s not good for you.”

Bokuto pulls away only very slightly and his gaze locks you in your seat, your lungs stopping mid-breath. His golden eyes start a forest fire in you.

“Are you coming with me?”

You look down, but his fingers on your chin force you back up. After a solid day of running, here’s when you must face your fate. This forest was never meant for someone alive, after all, and your choice would present itself to you sooner or later. Where he looks, your limbs return to life, and there is no reckoning more undeserving than Bokuto in the flesh.

His lips part, you inhale, and he asks you again: “are you coming with me?”

You don’t notice how hard he’s holding onto you- perhaps you bruise, perhaps you don’t, but your soul feels battered and there’s nothing but dregs left for you to deny such a force. You nod weakly, he glows, and you despair.

There’s nothing left to be said. He pulls you up with a hand, and he keeps you in front of him as he makes his way back, almost as if afraid that you’ll vanish if he turns away for a moment. There’s no telling which way you’re headed, but Bokuto has his hands placed firmly on your shoulders that twist with each misstep, and somehow, the light at the edges of the forest grow sharper and sharper until the fog is almost gone, and you are only a few steps away from that which you had run away from.

“Bokuto-“ you stop so suddenly that he almost trips over you. Bokuto immediately turns you around, and looks over you with searching glances.

“What’s wrong? We’re almost there.”

“I-“ you’re stuck, and you touch at your throat praying that the words will leave it, “I don’t- can’t; Bokuto, I-“

He dips forward, and you know that he knows. Your hand is half raised, ready to mimic the gesture of seeing him off, and he wraps his blistered fingers around yours. Now there’s no movement to make, and he’s holding on to you so you can’t run.

It’s hard for someone always bathed in light to ignore how sharply the shadows cut.

“We’ll talk, I promise,” he begs you, without begging, and you don’t know if he’s pleading or if he’s telling, “I’ll listen, I’m sorry for all the times I didn’t listen. Will you talk to me? Will you give me one more chance?”

“It-it was never you, Kou-“

“More than what relationship we have,” he interrupts, this time he’s the one looking down, but you have no free hand to push his chin back up for him, “I’d never forgive myself if I ever let you go without knowing you. We’re  _friends_ , before anything, right? I love you, as a person, and I don’t want to lose you without asking why.”

He’s crying.

“ _Please_.”

He’s also giving you a choice. A choice between life and death, between solitude and vulnerability- and beyond any of your actual choices, he’s giving you  _freedom_ , and that’s more than anything you’ve had in a very long time. Hating yourself isn’t a choice. Wanting to die isn’t a choice. Being chased isn’t a choice, but being with Bokuto  _is_.

“Okay,” you tell him, and you’re crying now too. “Okay, let’s go back and talk.”

He’s crying even harder, but he’s also smiling, and you pull him closer to you. You don’t feel like the strong one at all, but you’ll give him anything he needs, all the things you don’t have.

“Let’s go back,” his voice cracks, and you tug on his hand to let him know that you’re ready.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

“I know,” Bokuto replies, all nasally from his stuffed nose, “I’m sorry too.”

 

* * *

 

 **Lev**  doesn’t think that he’s insensitive. He doesn’t think that he’s particularly unobservant either, because volleyball’s a difficult sport, and he’s doing alright.

Right?

There’s a rage that grows in him the more he thinks about how he’s  _not_  anything, and he can’t stop his shaking. He doesn’t know what it’s from, maybe it’s fear from this terrible forest that doesn’t seem to leave him alone- but he can feel the way his calves tremble with each step he takes, and his hands are trembling when he places them on a tree trunk for support.

Or maybe it’s from how exactly alone he feels, surrounded by the absence of so many past people, and he feels sick to his stomach trying to imagine how you must feel right now. He’s your phone in his left hand, too afraid to put it in his pocket in case it disappears just like you did, and he holds it closer to himself like a guiding beacon.

You had never put a password on your electronics, so it had been easy enough to unlock it and read your note entries. When he had first noticed your prolonged radio silence, Lev had been annoyed, because how would he know what he did wrong this time? You rarely gave him the cold shoulder, and precisely because this week had been going so well for him (Kuroo even let him off early on Wednesday practice), it had just been that extra bit of unfair- did  _you_  of all people have to put a damper on his mood? Six hours later, when he’d decided enough was enough, he’d called your home to see if you’d holed yourself up there, and your mother had told him you’ve been out at your captain’s house for a few days. Now that had just been a new level of irritating.

 _“It’s nice to hear from you again, Lev,”_ he remembers your mother saying,  _“but I’m rather surprised she hasn’t told you.”_  It was a surprise alright. He had been in a fury, and even Kenma had shown concern when he had texted him out of the blue about how angry he was. Lev had no idea who your captain was- you rarely talked about her, and to tell the truth he was marginally interested in tennis at best, so he’d sat there, hugely annoyed, for the better part of three hours until his mother had called him down for dinner.

He remembered that he’d thought ‘what a pain’ it was to have a girlfriend. The third years like to go on about how it’s great to date and all that, and  _yes_ , he has fun with you around, but how can this feel so crap? He’d gone down and declared something along the lines of ‘love is suffering’ to his parents, and they’d just looked at him knowingly, which annoyed him even more. Adults, and how they pretend to know what’s going on.

Lev’s lost now, and he’s panting even though the air is unnaturally chilly against his translucent skin. The trees look exactly the same as they had a good fifteen minutes ago, and he’d possibly tripped on the same tree root twice. He has to take a deep, deep breath to stop himself from bursting into tears. It feels like he’s been walking in circles-  _always_  been walking in circles, dancing around his own ego like a children’s song and he folds his legs underneath him and cradles your phone in both hands.

If he had taken less time to get to his feet. If he had decided to look for you just a few hours sooner. If he had gotten over himself quicker, had stormed to your house earlier, had actually searched for you instead of stare angrily at your untouched bedroom, he might have noticed it faster. If he had paid attention to you, he might have learned about you sooner, understood you more, and maybe having a girlfriend would still be painful, but a different kind. A kind where it would be shared, instead of alone and creeping away in the darkness of the evening. Lev sits alone and wonders how much blindness it must have taken him for him to have noticed utterly nothing about you.

_Lev’s late at practice today. He has a practice tournament next week, so I shouldn’t disturb him. Maybe I’ll text him goodnight later. We’ll see._

_Lev’s spending time with Kenma this weekend. Maybe Hinata is there too. Should I make him lunch?_

_Lev’s pretty busy lately. I guess I shouldn’t call him tonight. I’ll walk home by myself today._

_Two of my friends asked if I’ve seen Lev lately. I haven’t._

_I saw him talking to a really pretty girl this afternoon. She’s a year above, I think. I don’t think she does sports, she’s too slim for that._

_Lev’s talking to someone else today. He told me to go on ahead, so I’m going home now. I don’t think I’ll call him tonight either._

_Sometimes I wish I could tell him._

_Lev’s talking to Fukurodani’s manager- she’s a lot skinnier than I am. I’m probably not very good at tennis because I’m too fat._

_I went home by myself today. I didn’t see Lev leave practice._

He has an urge to bury your phone into the very ground next to him, smother it with dirt so far down that it’ll be a grave fit for his own sins, but he’s shaking too much to dig. His fingers are too numb from the cold for him to really do much too, so they keep on pressing ‘next’ on your phone. Next. Next. Next.

He’d pressed the same buttons in your room too. It was quiet without you in it, and it had been the first thing he’d noticed on your desk. Lev clearly remembers flitting through your short diary entries and going through them a second, a third time, his chest growing tighter and tighter with each rerun of everything that he hasn’t noticed.

Lev pauses, and glances at your storage. There are other folders, things besides ‘Lev Haiba’. There are ‘Family’, ‘Tennis’, ‘School’, ‘ _Me_ ’ and ‘Nothing’. He doesn’t dare press the other ones. He’s tried, of course he’s tried, but each time his fingers hover over the little button, something in him gives and he presses into his own folder again. Perhaps it’s his conscience, long-lost, like a prodigal son too late for his father’s funeral.

He gets to his feet, and keeps searching.

He’s too afraid of the silence to break it, so your name goes uncalled. Instead he cries it in his mind, in shouts, in screams, in murmurs, in whispers, and along with it goes his apologies owed to you, and he prays that if he never finds you, his thoughts might have a fighting chance.

 _If he never finds you_. Maybe this is a race- to see who dies first, in the place where things end.

Just then, something in the forest shifts. The trees seem to murmur amongst themselves and the moss under his feet solidifies into something less slippery, and Lev can take purchase on branches that he’d slipped off just minutes before. He’s not sure what changed, or if anything had changed at all and it wasn’t just his adrenaline waking up, but the circles seem longer and longer until they’re no longer circles.

He comes across a strange arrangement of branches that he’s never seen before, and he’s so filled with relief that he doesn’t consider the implications that he might be headed somewhere he doesn’t want to be. Another step, and Lev only thinks about how he wants to find you, even if it’s just to say sorry, even if he comes back from this forest with less than he had going in.

The forest doesn’t dim nor brighten no matter the time of day. Lev’s muscles tell him that it’s been a long period of time he’s been lost in this forest of suicides, but nothing around him changes much.

“Lev?”

Lev almost trips, and for a silly moment he wonders if he’s starting to hear things or if ghosts really exists and he’s fucked, but he turns, and he doesn’t have to search much. You stand right beside a rather homely looking tree that stretches on for miles upwards, and Lev almost falls to his knees.

“I  _found_  you,” he breathes. You look so normal, all bundled up and ready for the chill- nothing like the wretched mess he’d imagined you to be in his mind. You’re smiling at him, a little oddly, a little sadly, and Lev’s lips twist as he starts to cry.

You look mildly alarmed at that, and dance forwards to take his hands in yours.

“Are you alright?” You ask, and he feels undeserving to even answer.

He does, anyway. “I’m fine, I’m fine. I- I just can’t believe I found you.”

“You  _were_ looking for me,” you say with a small laugh, “it’d be a bit disappointing if you didn’t find me.”

He feels a familiar spark of annoyance at that, at how you’re  _laughing_ when he’s been spending what could be days in this godforsaken place in utter terror and regret. Still, if he’s learned anything from wandering alone, he keeps his tongue and his temper in check.

“I could’ve gotten lost. You could’ve gotten lost. Do you know what this place is for? I thought the worst!”

“Of course,” you blink, “I thought I was the native here, Mr. Russian?”

“ _Half,_ ” he answers snappily. “I was really worried! Please be serious right now.”

“I’m sorry,” you say quietly. Lev doesn’t notice your hand sneaking into his and prying out your phone from his death-grip until it’s done. He keeps his silence as you stare at it, a little dazed and a little empty.

“You had this?”

Lev nods reluctantly. “I found it on your table.”

“You read it, then.”

“I… yeah. Sorry if I shouldn’t’ve.”

You shake your head, and the smile is back despite it being even more sad than before. Lev doesn’t like the sudden transience your frame seems to take on, and he has a terrible feeling that you’ll disappear into the woods if he says the wrong words. He holds onto your hand more tightly just in case.

“Can we go home?” It takes him a heave of his chest to ask you. When he does, he can feel his lip tremble at your hesitation, at your silence. It’s selfish, but he doesn’t want to hear an answer he doesn’t want- he’s not ready, he doesn’t know if he should pull you with him, pick you up screaming and crying-

“Yeah,” and his heart stops, “let’s go home.”

He’s probably still crying, he can’t tell, but you’re smiling a little more, a little more  _sadly_ , and all he can do is open his mouth and close it again. He nods, and starts to walk the way he had come.

There’s no resistance from you as your hand is still held, lax, in his and although he’s walking ahead of you, each throb of your pulse underneath his index finger is his thread out of the labyrinth.

You’re silent, and he’s silent because of it. He doesn’t know what he’ll find at the end of the string. The phone is forgotten in your free hand, and all Lev knows to do is to keep praying- pray that he’ll able to do all the things he’d failed before your diary entries.

The forest doesn’t hold him back, and Lev suspects that he knows why. He’s learned now, that there are more frightening things than ghosts in the dead woods.


	60. Tsukishima gets jealous of his s/o visiting him in class

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> helloo! may i have a scenario where tsukishima is telling his s/o who is a third year to stop coming to see him during class breaks because she gets too much attention and it makes him jealous if that makes sense? i love your blog btw!!!!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: It’s been a while since I’ve written Tsukishima (so I hope I got it right), but it was still a lot of fun. Always fun to write the sass-queen. :D Enjoy!_

“But Kei,” her gentle voice so firm that it surprises him a little, “how else am I going to get your lunches to you?”

“You don’t  _have_  to,” Tsukishima protests rather feebly, “you’re not my mother, you don’t have to keep on making those for me every day.”

“But you like them, don’t you?”

She looks so incredibly earnest as she asks that Tsukishima, ice-prince extravaganza, has to do a double take and reconsider his reply. The rotten truth is, he  _does_  like them. They’re the best thing he’s ever tasted, and he’s a firm advocate for her pursuing a culinary career after high school. His mom wasn’t particularly happy to hear that her cooking had been put in second place, but there’s never saying no to her son for her.

Very much like his situation right now, interestingly. His girlfriend always had a tough streak that props her core up no matter how soft and kind she’s to everyone (to his chagrin). Many a time has Tsukishima been told that he doesn’t deserve her, she’s just  _too nice_  for an asshole like him, and he rather has to agree.

“Kei?”

“Oh,” he fumbles, ‘cus  _shit_ , he doesn’t want to stop eating her lunches but- “it’s just- is there another way?”

“Are you asking me to set up a smuggling ring just to send you your lunches without me showing up at your classroom?”

“Could you?”

“I’m not a drug dealer.”

“It’s just a system!” He argues with an odd fervour for someone who has never taken drugs once in his lifetime. “That’s not what I mean, I guess.”

“What’s wrong? Why don’t you want to see me?” Oh God, her eyes are blinking with worry, and Tsukishima can see the way her fingers are twisting behind her back, determined for him not to catch it. He does anyway, because he’s just that good.

It could get a lot worse. He could make some excuse which she wouldn’t buy as usual, and then a shitstorm could follow.  _Or_ , he could tell her the truth, no matter how juvenile and embarrassing it is. No matter how embarrassing it makes  _him._

He sighs heavily and looks away. His height comes in handy sometimes, makes it easier to avoid awkward eye contact. “They talk about you a lot.”

“Okay. Are they mean about it?”

“What?”

“Do they say mean things?” She leans closer, face more serious than ever, “Do they make your life difficult?”

“I- no, that’s not quite-”

“Then what’s wrong?”

Urgh.

“They  _like_  you.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“No, they  _really like you_. All the guys want to date you and all the girls want to see what’s in my lunch all the time. It’s annoying.”

That makes her laugh. It’s a wholly good-natured one, but Tsukishima feels a bit ridiculous still. After all, there’s no denying how ridiculous his request is to begin with, and if you had told him several months ago that he’d be embarrassed by handmade lunch boxes, he’d probably just laugh at you. Or cuss. Maybe both, with a sneer as a bonus.

He clears his throat, hoping that it gets her to stop bloody laughing.

“My brother told me that guys like to know that they’re girlfriends are desirable, if I remember right,” she says in between chuckles, because she can tell that Tsukishima wants her to shut up from the way he’s staring at some clouds.

Tsukishima shrugs, still looking up.

“He’s statistically correct. Socially. Do you think I’m a guy who likes that stuff?”

“Do you?”

Okay, now he’s got to peer down at her just to see if she’s taking the piss out of him. His chin barely passes her maximum height and all of a sudden, there’s a small hand against his cheek that’s pulling him pretty firmly towards her.

She’s kissing him before he knows it, and Tsukishima allows himself just this little slip up; it’s only good manners- oh fuck it, he presses closer to her, almost cradling her with his body and kisses her like it’s their first night together.

It probably takes them a solid two minutes before pulling away from each other, but a few seconds is all he needs to push his glasses back up his nose and for her to have that infernal grin on her face again.

Clearly whoever thinks she’s soft and innocent is just expertly deceived.

“Still don’t want to see me during lunch?” She whispers with a velvet tone, in that small spot underneath his ear that gives him shivers.

The minx is doing it on purpose, and  _god_  knows he’s fucking weak to it. To her.

“If you want to so damn much,” he says, like he’s ever had a blooming choice to begin with.

There absolutely isn’t, not with the way she leans back just enough to beam at him. Tsukishima sighs.

“Just, I don’t know, I’ll start bringing pepper spray with me or something.”

She beams some more, completely unperturbed by his frankly ridiculous suggestion and in that moment, he’s so  _proud_ of her and she’s  _all his, goddamnit._

“I’ll bring you some during lunch!”

Fuck it. Tsukishima lowers his head and laughs until his sides ache, and kisses her again for good measure.


	61. Terushima's s/o stressing out over school

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
>  
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> i'm starting year 12 in a couple days and i'm kinda freaking out its just that everything is suddenly becoming reality and i'm not ready to have my last year of high school 2000% terrified but excited at the same time and i was wondering if maybe you could do a scenario with terushima (gotta love the crazy boi) where his fem s/o is always fun and games like him but she's been stressing over the workload she has lately and has been wearing herself out? <3  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I’m sorry this took so long and I know it’s long since you’ve started Year 12, but I still wish you the best of luck with school. :) It’s always the last years of anything that you’ll carry as memories for the rest of your life, and I hope they’re wonderful ones. I hope this scenario encourages you a little!_

It takes the whole of two hours for Terushima to realize that something’s different from usual. He’s a free guy- viva la revolution and all that- and when he’s not hanging out on campus with his friends, he’s hanging off campus with his friends. Not  _once_  has he been told to calm down with his antics, and he’s always smirked his satisfied way out of the envy of all his mates whenever they gripe about it at their regular bar.

Perhaps he has an actual reason for this terrorizing fear of commitment, perhaps he should go talk to someone about it before it comes back to bite him in the ass when he’s gotta find a job, but right now, life’s better than good. He’s learned on this merry road of life that there are some things that are worth returning to even without being leashed, and that he’s a lucky bastard for getting the chance to.

That’s why, it takes two hours. Two whole hours, swinging his feet off the ledge of a metal pylon and sucking in the tanning sky. It steals his comfort zone away as he marvels in the feel of his ankles tapping against cold metal in intervals of two; seeing how little effort it’ll take for him to push off and  _fall_  flushes the air back into his chest.

Terushima can’t even pinpoint what’s missing- what’s making his pulse fall short of their regular pattern, but he takes out his phone and pushes those buttons anyway. He leans back and counts the tap of his nails against the glass of his touchscreen, and even without pressing the call button he feels something inside unwind, luxuriously, his serpent around a golden column.

He hears the line connect, your familiar voice seeking out his, and he feels like falling.

“Hey,” he grins into the receiver.

 _“Hey,”_  you answer,  _“what do you need?”_

“Nothing,” Terushima shrugs, “just wanted to call you.”

You laugh, and it sounds exhausted.

_“I bet you’re off somewhere on your own today, aren’t you?”_

“How the heck do you always know?”

 _“Takes one to know one, Shuuji_ ,” he can hear you smile,  _“just as easy as breathing.”_

“Yeah,” he laughs too, “I bet I’m an open book.”

_“You’re not, it just so happens that we’re the same kinda book.”_

“So you know a lot about books, do you? Are you _still_ studying?”

“ _It’s not like I like it!”_

“I know, I know. I just- well…” Terushima pauses and runs over his dialogue in his head before it’s out and he can’t take it back. He’s fine and just feeling a little homesick for you, sure, but he can tell that if you’re any more tired than you already are, you’d be bleeding through the phone in little bits of data chunks. “How’s it going, then?” He tries again.

The inhale is shuddery, and he can hear it through the static.

_“It’s okay, I guess. It can’t really be anything other than okay if I’m going to do this.”_

“Hey,” he interrupts, voice soothing in ways he didn’t know he could be, “you know it’s okay for it not to be okay, right? You don’t have to love it to get through it. It can suck, you can say it.”

_“…Shuuji.”_

“Hm?”

_“It sucks.”_

“I know,” he chuckles.

_“I don’t even- there’s no motivation anymore, y’know? All that I’m running on is the urge to not be a piece of shit for the rest of my life. I mean, who wants to be a disappointment all the time?”_

“Nobody,” he says softly.

_“Right? I’m sitting here studying my ass off and I don’t even know if it’s gonna work or anything. Everyone else is so gung-ho and I’m just… getting by? It fucking sucks to be working so hard and have so much to do and still be meh.”_

“When was the last time you slept?”

_“Dunno. Maybe a few days ago. I haven’t peed in ages too.”_

“You’re not gonna fail if you get up and continue being a human, babe.”

_“I don’t feel like a human. Is it possible for your bladder to be so undernourished that it forgets it exists?”_

“Yeah, hold on a sec, I’ll ask mine.”

_“Shuu-“_

“He says no. Sounds like I gotta pee soon.”

 _“You’re so full of shit,”_  but you sound happy, a little hysterical, but still better than when he’d first called. So he feels happier too.  _“I bet you’re somewhere difficult to pee from.”_

“Uh- not really. I could just unzip and let it go.”

_“What are you, Elsa? Where are you even?”_

“You’re asking? I thought you said you could read me like a book.”

Your impatient click of your tongue resonates with him on such a spiritual level it gives him goosebumps.

“Wow, you’re pretty cranky, aren’t you?”

 _“Yes.”_  You sigh with the weight of a family’s burden on your shoulders.  _“Sorry.”_

“’S alright. I’m sitting somewhere pretty high right now. On these metal things they have next to buildings.”

_“Somehow I know what you’re talking about. How is it there?”_

“Bit empty without you,” Terushima says honestly, “that’s why I called.”

_“Your gang’s not there?”_

“Nah, not today. Thought I could do with some time alone, if you know what I mean.”

 _“Yeah,”_  you breathe, and he wishes he could feel the warmth of it against his cheek, like his evenings with you.  _“It’s been a while since I’ve felt like that, though. I’ve been sitting alone in this stupid room for too long.”_

“Well, I’ll tell you what it’s like if you want.” Terushima lets his weight fall against a pillar as he stretches back to stare at the sky. “The sky’s pretty orange today. More than usual. It’s almost sunset, but I think I’m a bit off to see it full.”

_“Is it this late already?”_

“Mmm.” Neither agreeing nor disagreeing, he hums. “But it’s okay. There aren’t many clouds in the sky today, though, so there probably isn’t going to be much of a rainbow sky.” He twists to his left and lets his hair dangle against his cheek. “I can see the city from here. It’s not as loud as usual, so I guess it’s a quiet day for everyone.”

 _“That sounds beautiful.”_ There’s wistfulness in your voice and a longing that he realizes he misses. The same sweetness when he twirls you around, or the same thrill when you take him by the hand and run as fast as you can. He wants to hear it again, and again, and again.

“It is,” he tells you, “even though you might be a bit freaked out by the height.”

You laugh again, and you sound at least five years younger. It’s funny how much a person can shrivel up inside and age in just a week, just because of others.

_“Just strap me to something, I’ll be alright.”_

“I’ll hold on to you,” Terushima promises, “even if we fall, I’ll hold onto you. It’ll just be like flying.”

You lapse into silence, and Terushima, although not regretting a single word, has his whole body tense, a guitar string ready to be plucked. He’s waiting, and whatever time you need, he knows you deserve.

 _“I wish I could be there,”_  you finally say.

You’re crying. He can hear it in the small breaths you take, and if it would bring him to you, he’d leap off right this moment, just to lend you his lungs instead. His palm is sweating around his phone, and he grips it tighter in spite of the danger of it slipping through his fingers.

“Do you want to be?”

_“I feel really stupid, sitting here. Getting nowhere.”_

“I know you’ll be alright. I’m not just comforting you,” he adds, “I just know you’ll do just fine. There’s no rush, we all get where we want to go at our own time.”

 _“Wow, Shuuji,”_ you huff amusedly,  _“since when were you so wise?”_

“The view does things to a guy,” Terushima teases. He imagines wiping the tears off your face with the pads of his fingers. “How many things assignments do you still have to do?”

There’s a moment of quiet when you count on your fingers.  _“Three, I think. I took my shift off to catch up on work.”_

“When will you be done?”

_“Probably sometime after dinner. Nine? I don’t know, I’m shit with being productive.”_

“Right,” he says slowly, and taps his heels against the metal frame again, “you know you can call me anytime, yeah? I’ll be here.”

 _“Hopefully you’re not still on that beam the next time I call you,”_  you tease weakly,  _“but thanks, Shuuji. I’ll call you when I’m done.”_

“No problem.” He smiles. “Love you.”

_“I know.”_

The click of the call ending brings him back to the stillness of dusk, quite like popping your ears after a swim. Terushima wonders how loud he’d been, but it hardly matters when he’s too high up for anyone to hear him. For anyone to notice him do anything at all.

Nine, you had said. Give or take a few hours, he’s got an idea; anything to bring you back to where you belong, in the midst of endless freedom, like him.

He starts to make his way down the beam with the agility of one who truly skips class all the time to parkour, and thinks of the best route up for someone afraid of heights.

After all, the sunrise after a sunset is just a turn of the head away.


	62. Kenma has anxiety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> okay, i just can't stop thinking about this? but like, i imagine that if kuroo has an s/o, they're probably going to be friends with kenma, right? i, along with probably the rest of the fandom, also headcanon that kenma has anxiety. so can you do a scenario where said gf is with just kenma (probably waiting for kuroo or planning his surprise party or something) and suddenly kenma gets a mental breakdown so she kinda comforts him while kuroo gets a call and rushes to where they are?  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I have so many things to say with Kenma, but I hope that this turned out to your satisfaction. Honestly, I think Kenma is very strong. But even the strong have their weak moments, and they deal with it the best they can, right? So I think that his way of dealing would be his silence, and all his different sides just collapsing into each other, and Kenma forgets who he is a little. I’m no expert on anxiety, and I can only base this on my singular experience, but I only wish that when it happened, I had been around someone I could trust, like Kenma has._

Kenma’s never been one for many words. It’s a quiet afternoon, a rare day in Tokyo indeed, and Kenma’s silence as you manoeuvre his mouse across his monitor is more than the approval you need. Maybe he’s just in a giving mood, or maybe there’s something about the way the sky’s darkening today, but just because you can’t put a finger on it, doesn’t mean it’s less valuable in the slightest.

“I’m going to press create, okay?” You glance down once at your friend’s defeated posture and grin. Kenma doesn’t even bother nodding, or speaking, he simply looks up at you with that exasperatedly dead expression on his face, and you know that it’s ago.

You press create, like you had said, and the ‘create your character’ screen pops up immediately. As expected of the newest graphics card, there’s zero lag in this gamer’s build.

“Alright,” you tell him as you lean back, “now it’s all yours.”

“I see I shouldn’t have been glad when I found out that Kuro’s girlfriend is a gamer too.”

“What’s wrong?” You grin some more, channelling a bit of Kuroo yourself, “this is a game! It’s a good game! You can’t just play on those tiny buttons all the time.”

“This is an MMORPG, and  _yes_ , I can.”

“Since you don’t want to socialize in person, you can talk to people online.”

Kenma looks at you witheringly. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“You’re the one who invited me over,” you practically glow at the memory.

“Yeah, that’s ‘cus you wouldn’t stop bothering me about this game.”

“Not because you like me?”

“Get out.”

You laugh, an unfeminine, cackling laugh and somehow, the corners of Kenma’s lips tilt upwards just the tiniest bit.

“C’mon, Kenmaaaaa, make your character!”

Kenma rolls his eyes, but turns back to the screen as directed. You watch eagerly as his fingers drape over his streamline mouse, elegant from years of practice, and wait for the first change he’s going to make.

Nothing happens.

The cursor remains unmoving, and those thin, setter fingers stay exactly where they are. It’s a beautiful picture, but it’s less entertaining when all your friend is doing is staring at the shimmering blue creation screen without a single movement.

“Hey… are you alright?” You dare to shift a little closer. “I’m sorry if I was bothering you too much.”

“It’s fine,” he says so quietly that you’d have missed it if you weren’t almost draped over his back.

The hairs on the back of your neck raise in anxiousness anyway, Kenma’s reassurance bouncing off you completely. “You don’t have to play if you don’t want to. I know I was really pushy but-“

“-I’m fine,” he repeats, firmer.

You sit back on your heels, falling silent. Kenma rarely spoke to you like that, or anyone, for that matter. As the silence grows longer, the more you feel in the way, as if you were blocking something profound from happening, as if there’s a voice in the background begging you to leave.

So you do, and you get to your feet without any resistance. Maybe Kenma noticed, but there’s no movement from him that indicates either way. The steps towards his bedroom door feels heavy, but you don’t let them drag.

“I’ll leave,” and those aren’t the words you want to say, but they come out anyway- blunt, more honest than anything else you’d be able to conjure. Your hand rests uselessly on the doorknob, and you count to five for a response before you left the house for good.

It hits four, then five, and you turn the handle.

“It’s not-“ he begins like a startled bird in winter, darting out and back in. You almost miss it, with the flurry of shame that rushes to your cheeks. “-it’s not you. I-I…” and you feel like you’re losing him, being dragged away by the current, and the boy who never speaks meets the girl who never fights.

You feel the metal slip away from underneath your fingers as you sink down to the floor. Afraid to look up, or perhaps to discover what you’ll see, you make your way across the traditional Japanese flooring on your hands and knees until you’re a reasonable distance from Kenma again.

His hands have fallen away from his PC and onto his lap. He doesn’t seem to be looking at them, however, but to the side, counting the ridges on a square of flooring.

“I’m not afraid of talking to people,” he finally speaks up.

Somehow, you know that you’ve lost this round, that you’re the one left to catch up as Kenma takes one step by one step away from his comfort zone and you’ve yet to attempt.  _Heck_ , if you’re catching up, then you’re going to  _catch up_.

“What are you afraid of?” Confidence comes slowly, but it swims upwards as your sentence comes to a close. Perhaps this isn’t what you’re best at, as the words you want always seem to dance in front of your fingertips and slip away at the last moment, but you- you love this kid. As a friend, as a human being, and when he turns around to look at you in a soaring act of bravery, you’re humbled.

Kenma’s shaking, just barely, and  _just because_ , you reach out and pull his frail shoulders against your own. He falls into you without much resistance. His posture is still rigid, his angles unfriendly and his breathing hostile, but he’s close, and you’re there, and you’re going to sit there with him until that upwards twitch of his lips comes back.

“I’ve got anxiety,” he announces dully, like it’s unavoidable how the sun rises in the east, “GAD.”

“Okay.”

“I-I don’t like people around when it happens.”

You say nothing, because it’s the right thing to say. If Kenma doesn’t want you here, then you wouldn’t be. And his interruption is as much of an invitation for you to leave as was your five seconds at the door was to go.

“I think Kuro’s the only one who’s been around when it gets bad,” he adds.

“Would you like me to call him here?”

Kenma doesn’t reply, but you see how his fingers clench and then unwind again, so you reach for your phone with one hand and type in the message.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to,” you murmur. “But what happened?”

“Just now.”

“Mhm.”

His silence returns, as does his shaking, and all you can do is hold him with your own small heart. And, you wait. Soft, hesitant strokes up and down his back you offer, and he shrinks away at first but leans into your touch after a few seconds. Another act of bravery; you count two.

“I think of gaming a lot,” Kenma begins, “and I start a lot of games. So this MMO… it- I keep on starting things, and it’s like a loop.”

You know he can feel you nod against his hair, and somehow, his heaves for air grow just the slightest bit more regular, although louder. Like he’s not trying to hide them as much anymore.

“A loop where nothing ever ends,” he breathes, and if a beautiful dream could be a nightmare, this is its battle cry. “I never start anything meaningful in my life, I only start things that take up my time, start games, beat levels- and then next game… I’m in a fucking loop.”

This is the first time you’ve heard Kenma swear with such vehemence, and it makes him sound present in ways you can’t bring to words.

“I’ve never really thought about what I’d like to do, or what I  _can_  do. Even volleyball I’ve followed Kuro around and joined because he made it fun for me- it’s like nothing I’ve done is for myself.”

“Your hobby is you, too.”

“But they’re just  _hobbies,_ ” he gasps, desperate. “I can’t be just  _games_ , that’s just really sad.”

Your fingers tighten, but you’re not going to say something you know won’t be welcome right now.

“And I don’t know what I’m capable of. Maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s just being a mediocre setter.”

He  _isn’t_. But you can’t tell him that yet.

“I can just see it- all my life I’m going to be tired and useless and just a quiet guy who games and doesn’t like people. I can’t even like  _people_ ,” and Kenma laughs cruelly against your shoulder. “What am I going to be? When will I ever get anywhere? What if I don’t care? I’m the most afraid of not caring. It’s probably the option that’s going to come true the most.”

“I don’t think you have to care,” you offer quietly. “Who has the right to guilt you into caring about things you don’t?”

Kenma moves to slap you about the head. “Society, dumbass.”

“Seriously, Kenma.” You sound serious. “I-I’m in no place to say much but, I think you’re allowed to be you. You don’t have to punish yourself for being you.”

“It doesn’t help, being me,” he answers. Toeing the line between snarky and exhausted, he sounds like Kenma again, and you know for one that his laugh won’t leave you.

You shrug. “It might not help, but we can make do, right?”

“Is that the plan? To wing it?”

“I’ll help you,” you promise, tentative and feathery, like a wish made in a dream, and all Kenma has to do is to reach out and grasp it. “Kuroo will help you. All your friends will help you. We can’t control everything, right? So we just gotta make do. Some things we just can’t plan for.”

“Some things,” he echoes.

“Yup.”

“Maybe I should stop gaming,” he says, and sounds so miserable saying it that it almost makes you laugh.

“Don’t! Who else would I play with? Besides, you’re not losing things because of your hobby. It’s just a hobby,” you tell him again, “it’s okay to like it. But it’s also okay to try new things too, so we can figure out together ‘what you’re capable of’, yeah?”

Kenma heaves a defeated sigh, and smiles. It’s a weak little thing, but it makes your chest warm. The only appropriate response is to cuddle him even more, to which he can only protest feebly against death by breasts. Naturally, you don’t hear a word of it.

It’s also how Kuroo finds the two of you- he’s panting and looking far too disheveled and sweaty for his fashionable looking ensemble, and there’s a funny little dance his face makes as he tries to decide whether to be worried, baffled, or  _tsk_.

“You put some effort into your clothing today.”

“Someone bothered today. Wow.” Both you and Kenma say in unison, with varying levels of enthusiasm.

Kuroo shakes his head, a parent home to find third degree destruction, and flops down next to the two of you. You yelp, because he’s a big guy, and very capable of flattening both you and Kenma.

“I was worried  _sick_ ,” he whines. “Then I rush here to find you two  _going_  at it-“

“We were not!”

“Oi Kenma,” Kuroo drapes himself almost entirely on Kenma’s back- which is supported by your own frame, and you definitely feel the strain. “Are you trying to steal my girlfriend?”

“Like hell,” Kenma rolls his eyes again, “she wouldn’t even leave me alone about that stupid game.”

Kuroo reaches over to ruffle your hair, and you curl into it unconsciously like a cat.

“Which game, eh? Can I play?”

“You really should ask her instead-“

“Whaaaat, you haven’t even passed the creation screen? Kenmaaaaaaaaaa.”

“ _Jesus_  Christ, alright, just shut up.”

Kenma drags his unwilling flesh body over to the abandoned PC and taps at his mouse with the weariness of a dying god. Kuroo hovers happily around him, pleased enough that the tension drains out from the wires of his muscles.

They make such a picture. You’re tempted to take out your phone and snap one, but something holds you back and you decide that the better option is to leave the two of them to it for now.

You’re a simple step away from the open doorway, but you can’t resist the temptation to glance back one more time.

Kuroo’s eyes meet yours, a stolen secret, and when he smiles at you- relief, gratefulness, pride, love- you don’t bother hiding your answering one.


	63. Terushima and Akaashi with insecure s/o

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> oh god i loved that platonic relationship scenario you did so much itwas so cuteee. do you think you could do a similar one but with terushima and akaashi? it doesn't have to be about a boy but just similar to the original scenario in the sense that the girl is emotionally down and feeling quite insecure about herself whether it's like her body or whatever ?  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: This might be a bit (read: lots) different from the original style- can you tell I’m losing my marbles. I just needed to let loose a little in this one. Still, I’m sorry this is super late, but thanks for enjoying my original scenario. :) This is the ‘or whatever’ part of your request, but I hope you find it helpful in some way._

It’s an impossible habit to break when you’ve been paraded in front of various forms of yourself since you can remember. Your mother and relatives had always acted like the mirror was something you should be happy about-  _look at how adorable she is!-_ and would make you twirl in half-step circles, like a concubine in front of her jailers. They’d talk cheerily at each other, making cooing sounds that should have been for girls at least half your age, and you’d pull at the pigtails that pinched at your scalp in an awkward act of self-consciousness.

The feeling doesn’t last.

The tricky thing about mirrors is that they only reflect, and each mirror is different, and so are your days. The one thing that never, ever changes, no matter how much you plead, pray, or attempt through your paltry meals is you. The person in them.

It’s a solitary stand against yourself each morning, when you’re past your childhood and nobody parades you around anymore. Nobody takes you by the shoulders and pinches your cheeks to tell you you’re cute. Men tell you you’re beautiful and hot all the time, usually in poor grammar and after that comes wolf whistles, or unsolicited dick pics, and you have to think:  _really? In Japan too? This day and age?_

You don’t take advice from the transfer students anymore, and the rush of relief when you press the cross icon to delete the dating app on your phone is the best you’ve felt about yourself in several days. You take extra care not to accidentally face the mirror, just in case your mood gets ruined.

But they’re  _everywhere_ , and you can’t run. You’ve gotten used to it by now, and some days when you think you’ve matched an outfit particularly skillfully, you even sneak a peek at a passing window, or the strange, twisted reflection in the elevator doors. Most days, you can convince yourself to think:  _hey, maybe I don’t look so bad_ , and keep walking.

People, however, enjoy spending their time telling you otherwise. Whether they mean it, or they don’t, you can always see the pleasure on their faces as they run their hands down their shirts as they mention that you’re not looking as shabby as usual that day, or that shirt doesn’t make you look as odd as usual. The doctor asks you for your BMI when you get your scheduled check in, and you don’t need the numbers on a sheet of paper. When  **Terushima**  asks you how it went, you tell him that you were lucky that you didn’t get a doctor who’d leer at you.

Truth be told, there’s nothing worth looking at, yet Terushima nods, looking satisfied.

“I know you wanted a new jacket,” he says out of the blue, “wanna go get one?”

“Right now?” You ask, confused. He’s right, you’d said that, but today is- today is not such a good day. Terushima’s watching every emotion flash across your face with a practiced focus, but he simply takes your hand and pulls you closer.

“Yeah. Let’s go. Leather, right?”

“I- yeah, a leather one would be nice.”

He grins, and a corner of a sharp canine pokes out from under his upper lip. “Good. I know exactly where to go.”

His motorcycle fits his character like a glove, and although you’re wearing decidedly not cool looking clothes, the confident glance he shoots you before he revs up lets you believe for a second that you’re right where you should be. Your arms squeeze his waist, as usual, any less would be dangerous for this breakneck speed, and you don’t mention a word about how his jacket is  _tailored._ It’ll probably cost you an arm- and it does, when the very proper looking man takes your measurements for a slightly improper garment- but there’s yet to be a moment where Terushima’s stopped touching you. The soft imprints of his fingers chase away whatever fastidiousness you might’ve had at the little numbers of the worn measuring tape, and the tickles of touch keep you on your toes- glancing here and there, and Terushima dances around you like a ghost, ready to haunt your fears better than they haunt you.

If you’d been asked what the attendant looked like, you would be hard pressed for an answer that isn’t a guess. Blonde hair- that’s Terushima’s, long fingers? That’s also Terushima’s. A warm smile, and without a doubt you know that’s Terushima’s. You’re left alone by the sofas for a rare moment, and you dare to flutter your eyes shut for a second and imagine a world without shape; you’re nothing, you’ve no boundaries except for where Terushima’s mapping them with his fingers. A hand on your shoulder, around your arm, over your shoulders, against the small of your back- he’s there right now, a chin resting on your head and he reaches out to stop you from pulling your wallet out when you’re welcomed back to reality with a smart, handwritten receipt.

It almost throws him off you when you tilt backwards to stare at him in surprise.

He cuts in before you can- “I’m doing this,” he insists, pushing your knuckles back into your pocket. “I’m taller and stronger than you, I’d like to see you try and stop me.”

“I’m not going to  _fight_  you,” you say exasperatedly, “but Shuuji, you can’t be ridiculous about this.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see the attendant quietly slide out of view. Then Terushima’s back, filling up your vision and seeking out your eyes with a worrying fervour. “This isn’t being ridiculous, okay? I got this, and it’s for you.”

“It… it’s a lot.” You start to feel a little dizzy just from thinking about the numbers. “You should save up your money, for you stuff.”

“Like what, retirement at thirty? C’mon.” He pushes himself into your space and smiles his crooked smile at you with those wicked teeth. “I just want to get you something. It’s time I reminded you that I’m here for you, even if you don’t wanna talk about it or you forget sometimes when you spend too much time in your head. Yeah?”

A lot of answers try their lot in your mind. You know perfectly well what he’s trying to do, and even if you didn’t, you can’t deny warmth that’s streaming so solidly through your body as if the elixir of life. There’s a small possibility that it’s a spur of the moment decision, a result of a poor day, but never in your life have you seen your friend, or any man for that matter, seem so sure about anything before. Although Terushima’s never been one for regret, this is something different.

This is inevitability. As if a mere mortal like yourself could push aside the goodwill of something with the brightness of eight and a half suns. You pull out both your hands in surrender and frown at him with a frown you don’t mean at all.

“Fine, you win. But don’t think this is the last you’ll hear about this.”

“Alright, alright.” Like sorcery, the shopkeeper’s back at his station and Terushima’s holding out a card you most certainly didn’t catch him take out. The sound of the receipt getting printed masks his reach for your hand with his, and you watch enthusiastically as Terushima attempts to replicate his signature with his left hand.

He looks like an idiot, that much you can tell from the owner’s expression, and you daresay that your linked hands look kinda dumb too. Terushima walks out the shop looking like he’s just won a war, and you’re probably smiling like a lunatic, and the two of you most likely look like idiots to everyone else.

That’s okay. Terushima doesn’t lead you back to his bike, but keeps on walking. He doesn’t even turn to look or ask if you’re okay with what he’s just done, simply: “feel like frozen yogurt?”

“Always,” you tell him, in the middle of November. Terushima grins, the tilt in his head betraying the fact that he knows exactly what you’re thinking, but says nothing.

There isn’t a single step where he isn’t stuck to you, apologizing wordlessly for getting a frozen dessert on a chilly day. Yet, pressed up against you, you can’t possibly catch a glimpse at your own reflection with him blocking the way of endless window panes, and all you end up seeing is how silly the two of you appear- his huge frame and most of you obstructed by it. He swings around so you’re facing the open street instead, and cars are too fast to catch yourself in.

You’re okay with that, and so is he.

 

* * *

 

Now that you’re, well, older, you’d think that you’d be able to, if not everything, control  _some_  things in your life. Like your daily routine, for example, or how long you use your phone for at night, or whether or not you’re finally going to send that email that you’ve been avoiding for weeks now. Okay, those are slightly more important things. But matters like whether or not you have a good enough facebook profile pic, or whether you should cave in and get a snapchat account-  _surely_ , peer pressure’s kinda hard when it’s literally just you in a studio apartment, right?

That’s what makes the taste in your mouth that extra side of bitter, like you vomited in your mouth three days ago and hadn’t deigned to brush your teeth. You don’t even  _have_  an instagram, so why the fuck are you on it?

Plus, honestly right now, you can’t give less of a shit how you got onto this hell-site, because that’s not important. Your profile picture isn’t important. Validating yourself in the eyes of your peer group has never been very important- as least, you try to keep it that way.

It’s hard, sometimes. When it’s three in the morning and you’re alone with blankets just slightly too thick and you’re either sweating or freezing, and when the only light that’s emitting is from the stupid photo app on your phone and the huge, pale green shadow you make against your modern, unpainted walls. Paradise from someone else’s camera and someone else’s ocean villa is less enchanting than it’s instagram filter. Scroll down two or three, and you see your friends looking ravishing in their graduate gowns, their postgraduate diplomas fluttering in the gentle Californian breeze, or perhaps, if that’s not pleasing enough, there’s always the lovely ‘first day of work’ photos in swanky high rises. One look at their pencil skirts and heels and you can almost hear the sound of stilettos crackling against polished marble in the late evenings.

Oho. Success has a sound, alright. It sounds like that stupid voice in your head telling you to look while you can, because you aren’t going to see the Bahamas in a bikini (so small it makes you look like a whale, by the way) any fucking time soon.

 _Blip._ Wearily, like you’ve looked away in the first place, you sort of, fold into your phone like someone does a meringue and click on the notification.

 _You’re still up._   _[ **Akaashi** Keiji 03:32]_

Yeah, well, so is he. What a night owl. ‘Owl’, heh.

You’ve recently cut your nails, so no matter how hard you tap your unrealistic, online keyboard, it makes next to no sound. Stripped even of your figurative, finger stiletto heels, and you watch as the pads of your fingers make soft, squishy noises against the oiled glass.

_I’m going to call you. You have read receipts turned on, by the way. [Akaashi Keiji 03:35]_

Exiting your text messages altogether, you give up on your half-assed reply and wonder why you even bothered in the first place. Plus, even with the pretty well stated warning that you’re about to get a phone call, you still flinch into your pillow pile when your phone screams bloody murder, too loud for the empty room and your thoughts.

“Hey,” you say into the receiver. Very original, much eloquent.

Akaashi, of course, doesn’t beat around the bush.

“Three AM is not so good a time to be looking at pictures of the beach.”

“It’s not just  _any_  beach.”

“Sorry,” Keiji says, sounding possibly the least sorry he’s ever been in his twenty plus years of existence, “is it the Bahamas or Koh Samui?”

“Maldives. I think it’s one of those ‘I worked hard!’ getaways. Doesn’t seem like a honeymoon, to be honest.”

“Too many pink drinks, too few rose petals. You can always tell.”

You pull a pillow out from under your mountain and shove it underneath your knees. Time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the shit show that is your life on the phone, and one can’t do that without proper back support. Maybe you’d start saving for a memory foam mattress instead of this cheap IKEA shit. Oh  _right_ , the catch being that if you probably don’t have enough money for a vacation, you probably don’t have the money for a Sealy Posturpedic. Who the fuck needs income, anyway.

“You’re taking too long to think.” Keiji knows. Keiji  _always_  knows. He should start a business, only that you can’t pay the bills. “Where did you go off to?”

The odd thing is, it’s never occurred to you that not talking to Akaashi at odd bits of the night is a way to live. It’s never occurred to you that the two of you would be anything else, either.

“How inept I am. At pretty much everything.”

“ _Oh_ ,” he half sighs, half says, “you’re more than diplomas, more than jobs. You know that.”

“Yeah, I’ve promised you that I’ll do my best, and I  _have_ , but there’s gotta be a cutoff point, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe I’m not a special snowflake. I’m not some untapped talent that I’ve never bothered to exploit- I’m just what I am.”

“You believe that where you’re at right now is the best you can do.”

“I-” your sentence starts to unravel right when you’re about to say it, and you unleash a torrid wail into your cushions where it’ll never see the light of day. Akaashi stays silent on the other end and waits patiently for you. “ _Yeah_. Like, even if I worked my fucking ass off, I’d never finish two degrees at Oxford in five years. I can’t beat genius!”

“And sometimes it’s not just academia, right? Sometimes it’s anything you choose to do.”

Keiji  _always knows_.

“So what’s the point?”

“I don’t know,” you say miserably. “I can’t even look away from the stupid instagram photos because I’m a masochist, apparently.”

“I can’t say that I’m the expert at any of this,” Keiji answers you quietly, “but we talked about this before, and do you remember what we came up with? That there’s more to life than being the best? There’s more to life than being  _better_ , you can be okay with just being happy. And that isn’t failing to live.”

“So, being okay with mediocrity.”

Akaashi huffs a laugh out, turning into static when it reaches you. “Don’t twist my words, moron. You know exactly what I mean.”

Akaashi’s always been different. The one and only different in your life, where all you can see are rivalries, and he’s just transcended that. He’s parallel, on his own path, at his own speed, and although this guy is somehow first in his goddamn medical internship, there’s not a speck in you that can possibly revolt. Akaashi isn’t the type to post pictures of his certificates on instagram. He’s the type to go home at 1am, after an eighteen hour workday and call you at three in the morning because you need to be called, and manage to say exactly the things you need to hear.

These people shouldn’t exist, seriously. And even if they did- and they  _do_ \- you don’t deserve them. Not your miserable, dull little ass moping around in bedsheets you can’t really afford, thinking you have it so bad.

“We agreed it wouldn’t be easy,” Keiji’s voice gently shakes you out from your quicksand, “so I’m reminding you. Everyone’s got their limits, but after knowing you for so long, I think this isn’t your limit. This isn’t all you can do. You have to remember that.”

“Is this a professional diagnosis?”

“Yeah,” he’s giggling (chuckling? You like giggling more) and it makes you giggle too, “as a bullshit specialist. I’m making you laugh now, so I’m doing alright.”

“Well,” you say as you finally start to lean back and stare at the ceiling, “I was sitting here being super mopey and miserable earlier. So miserable that I couldn’t even cry. An actual pile of shit.”

“It’s part of the medication. You get to be miserable, and each time you’re a pile of shit, you get closer to being better.”

“Be my family doctor, Keiji.”

He’s laughing too hard to sound tired now, but you’ve been counting the minutes in your head this whole time, and he’s giving you all these happy, tingly feelings so you’re gonna pay him back. A bit of it, at least.

“It’s almost four,” you tell him, “you should go to sleep.”

“Will you?”

“Yeah,” you grin wanly even though he can’t see you, “I’ll sleep and you sleep. Deal?”

“Deal,” and the exhaustion leaks back into him. You made a good call. “Goodnight, and get off that damn site.”

Akaashi doesn’t wait for your goodnight (he never does, because it’s always a chain that lasts another half hour), and hangs up. You let the phone fall loosely from your hands that misses your face narrowly, and close your eyes.

Too tired for misery, and too tired for instagram, you say fuck it to charging your phone and begin to count your sheep.


	64. Hanahaki disease with Bokuto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Vomiting. Vore? Reverse vore?
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> i can 30000000% imagine you writing a hanahaki disease scenario okay choose any haikyuu character idec its just hanahaki gets to me (preferably female pronouns and the girl has the disease but then at the end the guy finds out and they're like good friends oh god what have i done )  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: This. I can’t believe I did this. Basically 10k, and apparently I torture myself for fun. I bled for this thing like some Grecian slave about to get whipped by his master, good god, and I’m still not happy with it, but it’s done, and it’s out. I hope you enjoy. I really, really hope you do._

> The  **HANAHAKI DISEASE**  is an illness born from one-sided love, where the patient throws up and coughs of flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. The infection can be removed through surgery, but the feelings disappear along with the petals.

* * *

“There have been cases where patients have died, yes.”

You can still envision the doctor’s face, drawn and tired as he delivered your diagnosis to you in an empty room that smelled of man and disinfectant. The first hint you’d received was how the doctor had handed you your new medication with the ease of a thousand-day’s repetition, and you knew you weren’t rare at all.

Looking none the worse for wear, you had made your way out of the flooded hospital feeling no more important than you were when you had entered.

Having this disease- having  _any_  disease- made work difficult, certainly. The punctures in your skin were awkward to explain at first, but your co-workers had gotten over their steadfast suicide prevention printouts when they had accidentally opened the door to your office one afternoon to find you keeled over and suffocating. The injection packets carefully placed in a drawer at your desk had transformed into a lifesaver in that instant, from its prior purpose for reminding you how damaged you are. And after you had taken the afternoon off to save everyone from the trauma of having to make eye contact with you for the rest of the day, they hadn’t bothered you about it since.

Still, it was almost alright again. As long as you took your medicine at the instructed intervals, your life carried on in a delightfully mundane fashion. More than once, you’ve had acquaintances of yours exclaiming over their cheap American beer at the tidbit- how fascinating your life must be with such a romantic sounding disease! Could you possibly show them some of your flowers? They must be stunning.

The only proper response is to smile, and join in their merrymaking. It didn’t feel very romantic at all that night when you had been forcibly woken up mid-dream to a fit that had left you sore and aching until morning. Your injections kept the injuries, and therefore blood, away with its material-softening properties, and that was the single thing you could feel thankful for. Perhaps if it were any person other than yourself, you’d think it a beautiful sight too.

There are mornings where the nights have been particularly painful, and in compensation, you wake to a floor of beautiful cherry blossoms basking in the early rays of sunlight at your feet.

The unearthly effect lasted until the clock hit eight, and your trusty alarm reminded you with its gentle bubbling to take your next injection within the next fifteen minutes.

You’ve gotten used to sudden pinch in your skin whenever the needle pricks your arm, but there’s never anything pleasant about the strange burn that would course through your blood like liquid metal until it fades away. There isn’t a green light letting you know if it’d worked. You’d simply have to take the bet, and if you’re lucky, the petals in your lungs would have softened enough for it not to hurt the next time your coughing started.

Lately it’s become a habit of yours to stare emptily at your bank account online. You wonder why it suffocates you so to consider removing the affliction altogether with the surgery funds you’ve managed to save up. Yet, the evenings always end with you closing the webpage, reaching for your next injection and waiting for spring to arrive again in your lungs.

* * *

“How’ve you been feeling lately?”

Akaashi’s taken to asking you this question each time the two of you come within reasonable distances of each other, despite your weekly phone calls. You don’t think that he’s ever quite gotten over the scare when he’d discovered, along with you, that you’d suddenly been bestowed the magical, life-threatening ability to cough flowers. He looks every bit as serious about it now as he did on that before-and-after night.

“I’m doing alright,” you answer truthfully. “Nothing more stressful than bosses with incompetent PAs, but life’s going on just about the same as it had last week, if you must know.”

“Okay, but you told me about the PA two nights ago, drunk. I meant your body. Have you taken your injection before coming out tonight?”

“Yes, mom,” you roll your eyes, but you’re smiling, “I have it timed and everything. I’m going to have to start on the next arm today, I think.”

Akaashi shakes his head, ever exasperated with the ease with which you discuss relatively serious medical issues, and takes your left arm in a gentle grip. He runs two fingers over the light markings that pepper your indoor skin, and although the scars faded quickly, they don’t fast enough to escape Akaashi’s firm scrutiny. His face falls ever so slightly when he roams over your arm and finds no spare skin left.

“It’s getting easier,” you add, but your gut twists, “I generally move my schedule so I’m comfortable and alone when it comes around.”

“Alright,” he says reluctantly, “remember to let me know if you need any help. Any whatsoever.”

“I will,” you promise. “So cheer up, Keiji, it’s a clear night, and we’re here to party.”

“ _Party_ , pffft.” He’s tiptoeing the line to laughter, so you consider that a victory.

The walk to the massive gymnasium is a quick one. This early in the evening, the sun barely beginning to dye itself orange, there are scarce people not occupied with work to loiter. The two of you pause at the polished gates, giving a quick wave to the security guard you’ve rather become friends with, and he unlocks the door for the two of you with a cheery wave in reply.

The evening is supposed to be a quiet one, with Akaashi’s upcoming promotion (which means more work) and Bokuto’s upcoming qualifiers next week, there’s not much chance for the three of you to go gallivanting off somewhere like in the days of your long-lost youth, a mere five years ago. Sometimes you find that you miss those days when you’re sat at your desk, ploughing your way through paperwork that seems no more significant in the grand scheme of things than ice cream in winter. But you’ve got a picture of the two of them sitting by your tired old work computer, cheering you with rather impersonal gazes. You feel pride when you see the excited gleam in Akaashi’s eyes when he successfully finishes a case, and you lose your voice cheering when you watch Bokuto’s matches and he too is roaring in victory; they’re your anchors, and it’s a possessive joy.

Today’s a good day, and you feel inspired enough to venture that you might have a similar part in their lives too.

Bokuto catches sight of the two of you almost immediately when Akaashi pokes his head around the broad gym doors. He starts to wave, almost dislocating a joint doing so, and you hear Akaashi’s laughter accompanying your own. Although you can’t say that you aren’t thrilled to see Bokuto each time, what kind of normal person would be so unreasonably excited to see their friends?

 _“Guys!!”_  He hollers at the top of his lungs, possibly afraid that Africa might not catch his voice. Bokuto the prospective opera singer instantly gets told off by his traumatized looking coach, and you note that he’s looking none too sorry at all.

“Come on,” Akaashi tugs at your elbow, “if we stand here, he’s never going to actually make it out of the gym.”

You gesture at Bokuto, trying to tell him that you’ll be waiting for him outside the gym as usual, and he nods vigorously. You see Akaashi’s point.

Plus, waiting isn’t so bad, not with Akaashi’s quiet commentary about his office woes, your office woes, and the collective woes of the unfortunately born middle class, against a purpling autumn sky. Bokuto’s a quick changer, you have faith.

A happy roar echoes through the empty field all of a sudden, and several birds dart away at the sound. Noticing Bokuto’s entrance is a poor test of spatial awareness, thanks to his gift at announcing his presence. The two of you turn around just in time to see him skid to a stop behind your bench, not a drop of sweat breaking on his temple, and his characteristic beam is exactly where it belongs on his face.

“Good practice?” Akaashi asks.

“Nah.” Bokuto gestures hurriedly, and you and Akaashi get to your feet upon his summoning. “I got told off a lot today. Couldn’t focus, I think, but can you blame me? I’m  _super excited_  for our dinner!”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, you’d be excited even if we went to get Burger King,” you grin.

Bokuto beams some more at the truth of the statement, and you suspect you’re at risk of going blind. “Yeah! But this is special, for Akaashi.”

Akaashi stares him down. “And I’m certainly not having my dinner at Burger King.”

“You’ve changed, man, you’ve changed!”

“It’s called aging.” Akaashi sighs emphatically. The giggles start to spill over between the three of you because Akaashi sighing is always a beautiful scene, and it feels like almost no time had passed at all.

You all pile into Akaashi’s car, of course. It’s a no brainer, with Bokuto holding the world record for the most indecisive car purchase in history, and you with your wreck of a car sulking in a garage somewhere for repairs. It’s a united decision; besides, there isn’t an excuse good enough in the world not to lounge in a polished Audi when the opportunity arises.

It’s only a short ride, but it’s a happy, lush one that has you humming and sighing in satisfaction as the soft leather rumbles around you. Bokuto in the front seat is valiantly attempting to hold in his delighted howls each time Akaashi spurs his ride on, and alone in the back seat, you watch the life around you pass by. You press the heel of your palm against your mouth to keep in the laughter.

When Akaashi pulls up in front of the entrance of an  _extravagantly_ expensive hotel, both you and Bokuto share in a collective prayer for your wallets. Akaashi takes his time unbuckling the seatbelt and hands his keys politely to the valet, but Bokuto is the one who scrambles out of his seat first. It takes him no time at all, despite being tied and wrapped up in a suit and tie and the whole package, for him to walk over briskly and open your door for you. You’re far too occupied with not staring at his let-down hair to decline, and the arches of your feet groan in pain from your pointed heels as you step out of the car.

“Those are pretty high,” he comments, not meeting your eyes either.

You rub your neck awkwardly. “Yeah. I probably shouldn’t wear them the next time we do something like this.”

“No-“ he cuts in, and you’re surprised by how insistent he sounds, “-they look nice on you.”

“Oh… Thank you.”

Bokuto looks mildly conflicted. “I mean, if it hurts, then of course you shouldn’t wear them. Doesn’t seem too great to be in pain just to look pretty- I’ll carry you home if it hurts too much!”

The laugh you’re holding in between tightly pressed lips starts to push at your cheeks, and to your relief, Akaashi steps in looking amused.

“Koutarou, you’re just digging yourself in deeper.” Bokuto nods in full agreement, equally relieved, but looks pleased when you snort with laughter. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

You slip between the two of them, and proffer your elbows to them as gentlemanly as possible. They slip their hands into the crook without hesitation, and the three of you make your way towards your table like children without a care in the world.

“You look very nice today, Koutarou,” Akaashi murmurs later over his wine.

“Since you told me off last time for not having anything nice,” Bokuto says, “I had this made.”

You look up from your food. “Don’t you have suits for your press conferences?”

“Yeah, I do, but ‘Kaashi says they don’t fit me well.”

“You’re twice the size of a normal human being,” answers Akaashi, nonplussed, “you can’t walk into a store and expect their suits to fit you without getting them tailored.”

“You  _have_  changed, Keiji,” you grin. Bokuto cheers when you manage to dodge a well-aimed flick from Akaashi’s wine glass.

“And I’m not twice your size. You play volley too!”

“I hadn’t noticed, Mister Wing Spiker. How you manage to fit into your shirts is beyond me.”

“I’ve heard of some elastic sports bras for men or something,” you add, “you think we should get him some?”

“I  _don’t_  need a bra!” cries Bokuto as he buries himself into his napkin.

Akaashi begins to chuckle, and you follow with a poorly hidden snigger. It’s not long until Bokuto’s dragged into the maelstrom of contagious laughter by the ankles, and his is the loudest of all. It’s a chain reaction, and you laugh so hard that wine sprays out of your nose (the waiter comes by with a napkin looking very unimpressed), and although you’ve instantly become their new target, there’s no stopping the ridiculously elated burn that begins to hurt your chest.

* * *

Saying no to desserts turns out to be a wise choice. Wine, is a much more acceptable alternative to sugar, and you’re all thankful for the space left in your stomachs for more alcohol. After dinner activities include some tired, old scenic view rather than any raucous activity; it’s a well-known place, a waterfront hideaway a couple of streets away from the car. The three of you look a little out of place with your immaculate do-ups next to the couples and groups of teenagers in the late evening, but that’s what the Pinot Noir is for.

A small enclosure is all you need, and at nine in the evening with minimal, environmentally friendly lighting, the steps leading down towards to where the water breaks against bare concrete seems to stretch on for miles on either side of your small group. Akaashi settles in behind you, handing you your drink, and Bokuto shifts to make himself comfortable beside you both.

You’re tempted to lean back just an inch more to dump all your weight on Akaashi’s legs, but you know how he’d respond: he’d talked your ear off for half an hour about creasing his clothes the first time you’d done it.

Still, you do it anyway. Bokuto grins at you conspiratorially, almost egging you on, and you stick your tongue out at him and way just to act your age.

“Alcohol certainly makes us mature, doesn’t it?” says Akaashi dryly.

You’re the first to laugh, and Bokuto joins shortly after. Your wine swirls dangerously in your glass as you shake, balanced precariously between tipsy fingers.

“It’s a good night,’ you shrug. It’s a shite excuse, but nobody cares.

“It is,” agrees Bokuto.

It’s its own certainty of the universe tonight that Bokuto Koutarou looks beautiful against the shimmering lights of high rise buildings. It’s too dark, they’re too happy and you’re too drunk to police your urges in the heat of the moment, and your quiet defeat takes the chance to transform itself once in a blue moon, back into the longing that it was born as. Bokuto’s hair is down, a good enough reason in itself to stare, and the gigantic billboards, worth only in the colour that they exude, paints itself on the slivers of white that dash against Bokuto’s black hair.

You hope you’re still looking in the general direction of ‘forwards’, because this imperfect, sideways image would be enough to haunt you for several evenings to come. His pristine sleeves are rolled up on his forearms, almost a sacrament to how much it probably costs, and Bokuto leans back in a way so casual that it can only belong to him. His wine dances on imperceptibly gentle fingers as ink does on a crystal dish, and he looks like a king, admiring his drink.

He brings it to his lips to take a sip, and you force yourself to avert your eyes.

You can guess that your room will look like a florist’s dream tomorrow morning, yet somehow, you can’t bring yourself to regret looking.

“What do you think love is?” Akaashi asks, all of a sudden.

“What?”

He looks as mysterious as ever when you turn around with a frown. Bokuto’s eyes remain fixed right ahead, brows furrowed. You choose not to answer this trick question.

“Are you in love, Akaashi?” Muses Bokuto, and he grins at the idea.

“No.”

You sigh into your glass. Bokuto glances at you, but you miss it with your eyes downcast.

You venture a small daydream of getting on a boat, and sailing far, far away from your troubles, so far that your lungs forget that you were ever in love at all.

Despite your long efforts, there has always been something wild and untamable about the matters of the heart. You can no more keep what beats in you silent, for love is not a quiet affair, not even unrequited love, and its jail takes your days to maintain.

“I’d better get going.” Akaashi gently pushes you off his legs, and gets to his feet.

“Already?” You blurt out, but he only presses his empty glass into your hand. Now you have two.

“I had fun tonight,” he nods, “but it’s my cue to leave. You two enjoy the night a little longer.”

Bokuto looks confused, startled by the sudden announcement, but he doesn’t protest. Although it would make it easier on your nerves to follow up with your own departure, you know that there’s no way you’d be able to leave Bokuto alone here. Not even to make it easier on your own nerves.

All the while, Akaashi’s eyes bore into you.

“Goodnight!” He calls when he’s almost out of view. You wave weakly, and consider abandoning the wine glasses altogether for the bottle itself.

He’d expect a phone call when you get home safely, of course. More often than not, you’ve wondered how you’ve managed to land as good a surrogate mother as Akaashi Keiji.

“Is everything alright with him?” Bokuto wonders, “that was strange.”

“He’s fine,” you mumble, “he’s probably just scheming, as usual.”

Bokuto doesn’t ask more.

You carefully place Akaashi’s glass to one side, and trace your fingers along the edges of your own. Now mostly empty, the little flashes of colour from the skyline parade themselves on the colourless canvas. Your chest is aching all the while, as Bokuto waits for you to feel comfortable enough to speak again.

Always with many options, they tap at your mind. You could talk about the evening, dinner, or his clothes- even work, or volleyball or anything at all, just to fall into what would be a companionable lull. But it would be a discourtesy to fill a gift with white noise.

“It’s getting worse lately,” you begin. Liquid courage can only help so much. “My coughing. I think Akaashi wanted me to tell you more about it, rather than sit around and keep things from my friends.”

“And?” Bokuto asks softly.

Your head is still lowered, but you shift to face him a little more with your body. Bokuto, however, is already miles ahead. He already has; attention only on you.

“I… also I decided not to get the operation,” you say. “You know I’ve been on the fence about it since I found out. I’m… pretty terrible when it comes to things like these.”

“Operations are serious things,” Bokuto reassures.

Perhaps. Bokuto doesn’t push further than this, giving you some breathing space. He’s been there for you whenever he can, you come to a slow realization as you count the moments uncountable, and it makes you lack. The nights, the quick afternoons of existentialism and Bokuto’s worried expressions are not easily forgotten, and you feel apologetic for putting him in such positions constantly.

He’s waiting now, for you to decide that it’s okay to be vulnerable for him.

Little does he know.

“I’ve been saving up for it since it’s not really a part of my projected expenses, and there aren’t many specialists. I’ve got enough now, and more, but there’s something that holds me back.”

Bokuto fills in your blanks for you kindly, and without impatience.

“What is it?”

You open your mouth, and you close it again. “It’s… not something I can say just like this, I think.” You gesture vaguely at the sky. “Maybe another drink.”

“If you drink so much, you’re gonna need to pee pretty soon,” Bokuto says, but his hands are already reaching for the bottle on the concrete step behind you. You both watch in silence as the stream of burgundy slowly fills the wineglass in uneven splashes.

“Koutarou,” you say slowly, “if I make it to the bathrooms this drunk, in this outfit, I deserve a reward.”

“I think that not pissing your pants is a pretty good reward,” supplies Bokuto with a wide grin.

“I’ll ask you to carry me then,” you answer easily, and Bokuto laughs and agrees like it wouldn’t be any trouble for your struggling little heart.

It’s always Bokuto who’s larger than life, larger than possibility, and his laughter is enough to brighten several days’ worth of mist, rain, and whatever storms that decide to settle themselves into your day.

“You’ll be the death of me,” you admit, tone fond and warm despite the crisp evening chill.

“There are worse ways to go.” Bokuto grins, and all of a sudden you think of the number in your savings account, and the photograph of the pulmonologist on your laptop each evening. The website had been polished and clean, and you imagine your life after surgery to be quite similar in semantics to whatever you’re living now.

Pristine, sanitized, and a weary announcement of the time of death.

“Speaking of going.” You allow yourself a second attempt when Bokuto makes no move to say anything more. “I think that’s the closest reason why. Why I wouldn’t want the surgery.”

Bokuto frowns at your vague suggestion of ‘going’. “Are you worried about the success rate? I thought that it was a minimally invasive surgery. You won’t be at much risk of uh, dying, not unless there’s someone who majorly screws up.”

“You’ve done your research,” you say, surprised.

It surprises you when instead of the enthusiastic ‘of course!’, or the bashful ‘yeah’, Bokuto tugs the wine glass out of your tight grip (unfinished, you note) and frowns some more.

“I’ve done research, and more. It’s a serious thing for you, and you’re a serious thing to me.  _Of course_  I’m gonna do all the research; I’m worried for you, even if I’m not around all the time like Akaashi is. So don’t you think that I’m okay with you coughing your lungs out all the time.”

“ _Technically,_  it’s not my lungs I’m coughing out-“

“Aw, shut up,” Bokuto huffs, but you’ve managed to pry a small smile out from him. “Your beautiful flowers, then.”

“You think they’re beautiful?”

“Not when they’re hurting you. But I guess this whole thing- it’s like one of those things out of a story, those super old ones with dragons and virgins. It’s romantic in a pretty shitty way.”

Bokuto’s never struck you as particularly romantic, nor nostalgic for lost tales, but this must simply be another way life decides to remind you that even you, someone who thinks they know everything there is to know, miss things in cracks.

Yet, you understand his feeling. Sometimes in the mornings, or dusk, in the safety of your own room where your injections are always a comfortable distance away, the petals fall from your mouth without pain and seem to change shades as the sun shifts across the sky.

“I like the purple ones the best,” says Bokuto.

You blink. “Oh, the bellflowers?”

“No, aren’t the bellflowers the really light coloured ones? I mean the velvet looking ones; the really dark purple petals. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Oh,” you breathe, because Bokuto’s shifted closer and his earnestness glows in his amber eyes. “You’re talking about the gladioli.”

“Yeah!” He snaps his fingers. “Those! I’ve always liked their name, but I keep forgetting it.”

“It’s okay, nobody really mentions them.”

“I don’t see them much in flower shops though,” muses Bokuto.

“You’ve looked?” This time he does look slightly embarrassed, and you find it endearing in ways that conjure up a whole new myriad of floral species in your body. “I could probably have brought you some if they came up again. You should have told me!”

“No, no,” Bokuto shakes his head firmly. “I’ll keep looking for them. I don’t want anything that hurts you.”

You suppose not. He’s a better man than you are, and although there’s rarely a day that passes where you consider your illness ‘pretty’ and nothing else, Bokuto’s encouragement on nights like these somehow imbue you with the miraculous ability to talk about it as if it’s nothing more than nature. It would be too much, to ask Bokuto to simply continue his fondness for your purple flowers, and forget about the rest that comes with.

“You’ll have to wait then,” you tell him softly, “gladioli are summer flowers.”

You don’t even like flowers, which is the true irony of all this. You’ve only ever researched every different type of flower that you’ve ever coughed up to find an acceptable reason to despite them, but you can hardly do that now. Not when Bokuto wants to find them in flower shops.

“Will you tell me what you really meant by ‘going’?” He asks, finally.

“What I meant by going…” you murmur. It’s as if the longer you sit in silence, the further time will stay still. “You… you know I don’t keep the feelings, right? Once I get the operation.”

“Mhm.”

You can’t decipher a single thing from Bokuto’s pinched expression, and your fingers itch for something to crush.

“It’s a shame,” you say, “to have suffered this long and for everything to disappear. Does that make sense?”

“Not yet,” Bokuto says. “Like, I kinda get where you’re coming from, but you’re usually really logical and rational. I don’t get how you’re not gonna do a surgery that takes away what could kill you, just because you don’t want to waste your efforts. That just doesn’t make sense to me. Wouldn’t you get a surgery to cut out a tumour you’ve had for two years if you got the chance to?”

“That’s the  _thing_.” The back of your eyes burn. “This- my feelings  _aren’t_ a tumour. Koutarou-“

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never hated my feelings. Never regretted them. Not once. And I never will.”

“Doesn’t it hurt, though?” He asks. His voice is aching, as if it’s his heart that’s blistered and battered from an unrequited love. For a moment, you forget your own struggle and careens into the tumultuous sea that is Bokuto; he wears heartache that isn’t his own, and it is  _just so_.

You smile, because it’s a question asked from kindness, and it’s Koutarou. “Yeah, it does, but I’m used to it. Have you never had a one-sided love before?”

“Not really,” Bokuto admits, “I just tell them when I like them. If they don’t like me back, then I get rejected.”

“Then they clearly don’t know what they’re about,” you shake your head. “Nobody would ever lose out on a chance with you if they knew how you really are.”

“ _Right?_ ” Bokuto’s beam is back. “That’s what I tell them all the time, but nobody seems to believe me. I’m  _awesome_.”

“You are,” you wholeheartedly agree.

He calms down a little, and looks at you. “And so are you, y’know that? I’m starting to get what you’re trying to say now.”

Your smile begins to hurt on your face. “And what’s that?”

“You wanna keep your feelings for this person because you still like them.” He pauses. “Okay, wait, that sounds really dumb and obviously, you do, but I mean it like, you  _want_ to keep liking them.”

And nothing has changed. Not the fact that you’re still not getting the surgery, you’re still sick, and you’re still in love, but your heart doesn’t give a shit about all that. It incites its own riot against your ribcage, pounding against its own imprisonment; it wants to be  _free_ , like it was born to be, like all love is free and to experience everything for itself in the big wide everywhere.

Now, you know you’re no longer insane on your lonesome. You’re not just making any ridiculous choice and losing yourself to one-sided passions that dictate your life and death, because Bokuto gets it.

And is that not what we all want in life? To suffer, and to be understood for it?

“Yeah,” you reply. “That’s it.”

Bokuto doesn’t say anything for a while.

For a man with so many words to say, his silence is more damning than any of the endless hours you spend in front of your desk, head empty and soul evacuated from the premises. When he finally opens his mouth hesitantly, you can’t help but lean forwards on the edge of your seat to catch it.

“I guess I get this whole thing from both sides now. Of course I still want you to get the operation and everything, because I’m always worried about your health, but I get it. Even if I’ve never been hurting like you have before.”

“Thank you,” you say, and your breath steals a position in your throat when Bokuto takes both your hands in his.

“I’m happy if you’re happy,” Bokuto tells you. “I’ll support you, no matter what you choose, and I want you to tell me if you’re ever lonely, or really sad, okay? ‘Cus people make such a big deal about being brave and letting go and stuff, but they don’t know what you know. It’s not like  _I_  do, like, all of it, but I believe in you. You’re not being a coward and running away from doing the brave thing, ‘cus for you it’s probably scarier to hold on than to stop feeling, am I right? So I think you’re brave. Really brave.”

Are you? All the times where you’d pulled up the webpage, or tapped your clinic’s number into your phone, only to let your fingers slip from their place. Those moments leave you miserable, knowing that you’re so close, and the only thing that stop you is  _you_ , and you can’t take that. Is this bravery?

Bokuto doesn’t look so stern anymore. Although your eyes aren’t meeting, he’s watching you flip your emotions through your fingers like a worn card deck, and he takes your silence as acceptance. After all, you hadn’t said no. If it were anyone else, they would have been able to tell that you’d believe him even if he told you that the sun sets in the east.

It’s instantly colder when Bokuto’s fingers fall away from yours.

“I’ll go get us something warm to drink. Something that isn’t alcohol.” He grins, but it’s gentle. A nursing smile, soothing an injured deer. “Maybe a cake too, if they sell those by the snack cart.”

“Kou, you’re an  _athlete_ ,” you remind him, but it’s far too late and he’s walking away with a small skip in his step at the idea of actual dessert.

Still, it’s probably not too bad of an idea to stop drinking your problems away. At this rate, it’s not impossible that you’ll end up passed out with your skirt about your neck.

It’s still difficult, arguably even more difficult now, to tear your eyes away from his loosely set hair and the way he walks with the confidence of a man who knows exactly where he’s headed in life. It’s still a fact that everything’s not quite alright yet, but you feel redeemed enough. The bulk of your burden has been scrubbed away.

A tickle forms in your throat, and you worry for a brief second that Bokuto might catch you crying.

However, you didn’t need to worry about the tears. You’re too distracted by the entire emotional fanfare of yours to notice the familiar sensation of flowers creeping up on you, utterly unaware.

Your first feeling is a damning,  _fucking, hatred_  for this godforsaken disease, unwilling to leave you with a single night’s peace. The second, is a mind-numbing panic that sets into the corners of your vision when, after fumbling through your meagre excuse of a handbag, you realize that you’ve brought no spares.

You  _know_ that you’ve timed it carefully tonight, especially tonight, and Akaashi’s even asked. Calculated to within a margin of error of half an hour, and yet, you feel the petals multiplying in the dips of your lungs, and you know that it’s only seconds until you’re coughing fully blossomed flowers up your windpipe.

Inhaling, to none of your surprise whatsoever, is becoming more of a struggle, and you slap a shaking hand over your mouth to muffle the ragged gasps, struggling for oxygen and trying your best not to make a scene.

Your coughing is never quiet. It’s always a filthy, deathly sound that accompanies the supposedly elegant petals, and you can feel your capillaries beginning to burst in your cheeks. Your eyes begin to swell when the first fits arrive, and you see that they’re bellflowers, covered with threads of your own spit.

You disgust yourself.

 _“Holy shit-_ “ you hadn’t noticed him returning at all, and Bokuto’s audibly short circuiting behind you. Did he manage to find cake? You hope he doesn’t spill the drinks. “Where’s your shot? Is it in your bag?!  _Fuck, fuck, fuck-_ “

You shake your free hand at him. Your right is far too occupied with covering your own mouth, although it’s helping with absolutely nothing except for the outpour of your own saliva, and you gesture at Bokuto to sit down next to you.

Bokuto doesn’t, of course. He almost kicks over the wine as he breaks out into a stressed little dance behind you.  _“Phone, I need my phone, where the hell is Akaashi when you need him?!”_

It’s an exceptionally brutal night, as if the disease had simply lost its temper with your emotional progress and decided to give you something to choke about. You’re not quite sure what’s burst in you when a sudden coppery tang hits your mouth, and the smell starts to sink into the back of your nasal cavity until it’s the only thing you can smell in the air. Your elbows are on your knees, the only thing propping you up and your head is cradled in-between your knees in an excellent example of in-flight safety.

“He’s not picking up,” Bokuto gasps, “ _he’s not picking up._  Shit, no shot, no car,  _oh my god_ , I’m calling 911-“

Immediately, you use your first breath of air to rasp as loudly as you can at him.

“Sit  _down_!”

He does, he  _does_ , and that combined with your impending doom is enough of a kick up the arse for you. Who doesn’t want to die without regrets? And maybe you will, maybe you won’t, but it most certainly feels like death, and this is going to be the best excuse you’re ever going to get.

“It’s you,” you tell an absolutely terrified Bokuto. “The one-sided  _thing_.”

“Huh?”

Bokuto’s obviously chosen a fantastic time to slip into a moronic version of himself.

“Love.  _You_.” You grit. The flowers are slowing, but their size is growing, and the watery liquid pooling around the back of your tongue is definitely blood. Without your injection, the petals have become firmer, more solid, and it’s enough to scrape a great deal of skin off your esophagus, making the urge to cough stronger. “ _Idiot!_ ”

And that might be the last word you ever say, because fully fledged flowers are spilling out of your mouth, forcing your jaws wide apart for them to fit through, whole. You can feel a stem forming in the back of your throat that scrapes like nails against your flesh, and the horrific image of you pulling and pulling at it like some fucked up magic trick terrifies you into sobs you can’t properly sound.

 _Bokuto_ \- he’s the worst person to see you in this state- a slobbering, bleeding mess and there’s nothing you can do to stop everything splattering onto the hem of his slacks.

You can hardly feel it yourself when he throws himself into your radius, and crushes his lips against yours desperately.

It doesn’t last for long. You’re gagging, and he’s shaking, and you shove him away instantly. Bokuto reels backwards in abject terror as one does, watching a train wreck itself against a sheer rock face, and his hands stretch out towards you, stuck in the middle as he tries to make his mind up as to whether or not to drag you closer.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” he whimpers, and points his phone threateningly in your face, daring you to stop him. “You’re gonna  _die_!”

It’s the stem, it’s the  _stem_! Ignoring his hand, you steel yourself and shove as many fingers as you can fit into your mouth, and scramble for the end of the remaining flower. It’s the size of your palm, and your jaw feels like someone poured gasoline onto your neck and set you on fire, but you grip onto whatever you can and  _pull_.

Squeezing your eyes shut makes the feeling ten times worse, but you’re not going to look like a damned freak show, tugging and tugging on what feels like  _roots_  that have grafted themselves along your lungs.

It lasts minutes, maybe forever, but all you know is that it’s slime, and blood, and a fuck load of pain when it all comes out of your throat.  _You can breathe_ , but with the pain of a thousand needles, and phlegm makes your breaths choppy.

You glance once at Bokuto’s traumatized face with red-rimmed eyes, and promptly empty your stomach all over his shoes.

“Oh my god.” You wipe your face with your ruined sleeve and take a generous gulp of the nearest glass of wine. “I really thought I was going to die.”

Bokuto looks as if you really did. You’ve never seen him so pale in his life.

“ _Ambulance_ ,” Bokuto says weakly, “I didn’t manage to call one.”

“It’s stopped,” you insist, “please, I really don’t want to end up in another hospital.”

“You could have  _died_! I just- I just sat there and didn’t do  _anything_ -“

“That’s not true!” You fall to the irresistible urge to look away. There was one thing about the entire catastrophe that wasn’t on you, and your embarrassment leaves you feeling shattered enough to almost forget that the contents of your stomach are still marinating Bokuto’s loafers. “You stopped my cough. It would have gone on for a lot longer if you hadn’t.”

“You mean-“ His eyes grow to the size of lanterns. “You mean if I hadn’t kissed you, you would have  _actually died?_ ”

“Er, I… can’t say that’s not a possibility,” you say into your wine.

“ _Oh my god_.”

“I’m alright now, I promise!” You promise, because there are a dozen other things running through your mind that are infinitely more worrying to you than your health. “Wait- Kou, did… did you kiss me because you were… scared?”

It takes several stunned moments, but Bokuto looks absolutely furious.

You can count on one hand the number of times you’d seen him genuinely angry, and none of those times had been at you.

“We’re going home.”

He stands up, blood, mucus, vomit and all, and turns on his heel towards the main road without once looking back.

And what can you do but follow? Your feet no longer drag but sting, and as you leave your mess behind on the pavement, you wonder if this would’ve all been better if you’d simply suffocated instead.

* * *

The taxi ride serves to be some very awkward twenty minutes.

The driver had made no comment when two customers, in the dead of night, asked for a lift smelling like curdled milk. Bokuto had still held the door open for you, in silence, but his thunderous expression had kept your lips sealed shut and body leaned away for the entire ride.

Even now, you only feel as if you’d been wrung through an out of body experience, surreal, and from a third person perspective. You remember little more than the first few seconds and the last, everything in-between a sort of blur of lots of different fluids mingling on your face. Your worn throat still scratches at you with each breath you take as quietly as possible, and along with your ruined clothes and your furious companion, they slide together into a puzzle piece of utter dissociation between you and your disease.

When you can barely wrap your head around the entire wreck that was this evening, your fear of Bokuto’s reaction buzzes around in your mind in pulses of static.

It isn’t his rejection you’re afraid of. You’ve been living with your feelings for so long, and his kind and pained ‘I’m sorry’ is something you’ve taken to envisioning multiple times a day for practice, its only impact on you now is the gentle coldness of someone pressing ice against your skin, nothing more. However, you most certainly hadn’t expected him to be angry.

The car finally stops, and the car seems to rumble even more when it parks itself poorly along a silent pavement. The very marrow of metropolitan Tokyo fills the gaping silence of a tuneless ride, and Bokuto’s apartment complex looms ominously ahead of you.

He turns sideways to stare at you, and gestures with a hand for you to follow. It’s late, and the foyer is empty of its rich, city-dwelling inhabitants, either already asleep, or not returning home for the night. With each flicker of the lift climbing higher and higher and its infernal elevator music, Bokuto unwinds his hard edges with each trill of the violin in slow, smooth movements. The loose knots of his unraveling anger drapes over what remains of the tension between you two, and when the elevator dings, Bokuto presses a hand to the small of your back and quietly guides you forwards.

“Wait here,” he tells you. You stay where you are on his pristine sofa in quilted leather, amazed at how much an apartment can fall so far from its inhabitants. It’s untouched, polished with his superstar salary, and its tidiness is telling of exactly how much time Bokuto has to spare to spend relaxing in his house.

He reappears quickly from around a corner, carrying a small plastic case and several wet towels with him. He places the box in your upturned palms.

“I’ve these spare,” he says, turning the box over with his fingers, “but I don’t know how to do it properly.” It clicks open with a twist of a lever, and you pull out a familiar looking needle. Bokuto reaches out, tempted to feel the point, but pulls back just before he makes contact. “Can you teach me?” He asks.

“Kou… you have these?”

“Yeah,” and he says it like you’ve just landed moons away from the point, “what if you came over without your shots? I gotta be prepared.”

“ _Kou_.”

“Why- should I not have? Why are you crying?”

“These are  _prescription only_ ,” you warble miserably, “oh, you make things so hard for me. Always.”

Bokuto reaches out with his sleeve to wipe away the snot trickling down your nose. “Are you mad that I got mad at you? ‘Cus I’m not mad anymore. But I  _was_  really pissed off when you didn’t let me call an ambulance, and was like ‘ _oh, look I could have died but that’s okay_ ’ because it’s not okay for me if you did! I’m still super traumatized, so you’d better not be such a piece of crap for the rest of the night, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” you say. And you really are. “I should have thought about your position more. I was selfish.”

“You were,” he nods.

_Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. Bokuto Koutarou kissed you._

“But…” you ask because it’s driving you insane, “what did you mean by kissing me?”

Bokuto frowns at your question. “I was mad at that too. Asking me things like that as if I go around kissing people for experiments. Do you think I’d do that to you?”

“I… uh… no?”

“Good.” He narrows his eyes. “’Cus I wouldn’t. C’mon man, what do you  _think_  it means? It wasn’t a super great one ‘cus you were busy dying and I was busy trying not to piss myself and all that, but a kiss is a kiss, isn’t it?”

“So you… you like me? Just like that?”

This time Bokuto looks a bit perplexed. “Why not?”

You huff at him. “It’s not called an unrequited love for nothing, Kou. There’s a whole point to this disease.”

“Are you disappointed that I ruined your mojo by liking you back? Really?”

“I-“ fumbling dreadfully, you can feel the tell-tale creep of heat crawling up your spine like a monster from the depths bringing with it the plagues of mortification and disbelief. Now that he’s put it like that, you do sound pretty ludicrous. “I’m not… disappointed. It’s just that… well, people really have, died, from hanahaki.”

Bokuto clicks his tongue. “And you’re still alive. It’s a win-win?”

“Yeah, but I never- you’re  _reciprocating_ , like some shoujo manga, and this feels like something from The Notebook and not real at all! How am I supposed to know what to do if you like me back?!”

“Dude, dude,” Bokuto presses a cool hand against your forehead worriedly, “you’re blowing up.” He hands you a towel, and you press it to your cheeks. “It’s not unbelievable,” he continues, “not all of it. Don’t you think this is all real, at least? The towel? My sexy sofa?”

You laugh, a weak little hiccup, but Bokuto looks infinitely pleased with your reaction. “See? My volleyball biceps are always real. Besides,” he lets his hand drop down to your lap, and pushes away the box of needles to make space for his own calloused fingers, “we’ve always been right here next to each other. I know I’m not really good with feelings and things-“

“-yeah you’re really freaking dense-“

“- _thanks_. But what I’m trying to say is- there’s different types of love, right? They taught us that in Lit back in school, and maybe the line between them isn’t as big as we thought. I’ve always,  _always_ , loved you as one of my best friends,” Bokuto peers firmly at you then because he’s told you this before, but you’ve brushed him off every single time, “you  _know_  that, I tell you all the time. But that’s like, the basis of everything to me. I mean, falling in love with someone- it’s never been that big of a thing for me. No explosions or background music or anything, just- kinda a push off what’s already there. Do you see?”

Although Bokuto’s not really the most organized orator, he speaks with the conviction of a King. His thought process is absolute, the conclusion certain, and Bokuto’s voice wasn’t designed to wax poetry with his gravelly, scorching sound. It’s a timbre crafted to ignite embers, come hell or high water. You could have shoved a sock in his mouth and he would have powered through his confession all the same.

“That’s… that’s so profound.”

“I’m  _Bokuto,_ ” Bokuto grins. Somewhere above his head, there’s a flashing neon sign begging to be framed, announcing his existence. “Also I’m not suffocating, so it helps. You’re not too shabby yourself.”

You roll your eyes, and he sees right through you.

“When did you start?” You mumble. “Feeling… things. I’ve no context for this.”

“I didn’t suffer or anything,” he confesses, “not like you did.” His face presses closer to yours. “It hasn’t been that long. But I’m not saying that it’s a reaction thing that just happened tonight. I just… don’t think you noticed. Akaashi did, though. That’s probably why he left early tonight.” He starts to trail off, but something catches him just in time. His gaze refocuses, and he grips your shoulders tightly. “But I wouldn’t have done anything to you if I didn’t mean it. I might have freaked the fuck out and called the police, but I wouldn’t play with you like that.”

And you get it now. It never meant much to him that you didn’t notice. He liked you too, and that was it.

When the world humbles a man, it isn’t up to them to refuse. Bokuto has always been on an otherworldly plane of forgiveness all by himself, untouchable by mortal men’s wishes. The facts had finally caught up to you while you took a breather from the race towards your unhappily ever after, and had brandished an order telling you that you’ve been unfair.

They say that ‘love is blind’, with little beyond that, but misery masks with equal skill. You’ve never given Bokuto a chance, because nobody’s told you to.

He’s smiling softly at you. He’s never believed that there’s anything for him to forgive.

“I’m sorry.” You offer it so belatedly that it no longer makes a difference. Perhaps it never did, not to Bokuto. “I shouldn’t have thought the worst of you. I… shouldn’t have asked that. You didn’t kiss me because you were scared. I asked you because  _I_ was scared.”

“I know,” he says. “It’s harder for you too. You’re the one who has to take shots just for liking someone who doesn’t like you back. I know. I mean- I didn’t always, but I’ve been trying to get better at thinking about other people.”

Your heart swells, bloating with a fragrant blend of pride and helplessness. “You’re doing good, Kou. Way better than me.”

“But- that’s not what I want, though.” Your eyes follow as he lifts his hand, and runs it through your hair. He looks slightly pained, urgent, controlled. “You’ve got a lot of problems, you know? And it’s all heavy stuff: one-sided love and volleyball are kinda on different levels. So, if I can make it easier for you, I will.” The tips of his fingers brush against your temples by accident. You shudder. “We’re all trying our best, and who knows if it’ll work out or not?”

“We’re all trying our best,” you echo. A wisp of a prayer with no addressee.

“Yeah,” he smiles, “you get it. Even though you usually don’t listen when I say these things.”

“That’s not true!” You protest, but you know he’s right. He knows he’s right. Bokuto’s shaking his head because he’s right. “Just…” you slowly admit, “not many of the good things. They’re… harder.”

He looks at you intensely and opens his mouth with something to say, but changes his mind at the last moment.

“You gotta trust yourself more,” he says after considering his words, “I think you’re great. Akaashi thinks you’re great.  _You’re pretty great_.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” you laugh, at a loss with the onslaught of positivity, “what is this, a self-help session?”

“Nah. I mean, if you had let me help you in the first place, like, for real, you’d be in a hospital and not in my apartment asking me about my feelings.”

Your brows knit together and you pull away from his grip. “What’s wrong with asking you about your feelings?”

“It wasn’t the point, though!” Bokuto exclaims, “c’mon, we were talking about how selfish you were being.”

“Yeah, I  _know_  already.” You know what no matter how many times you change the subject or apologize, Bokuto’s never going to let it go until he’s drawn the right amount of contrition from you. “I’m just really sick of hospitals, and it’s not like they can do much for me anyway. It’s not possible to make the petals softer without preventative medicine, and honestly, they’d just give up and intubate me, and I hate that feeling.”

“I’d rather see a tube down your throat than you dead,” Bokuto says sullenly.

“I would just’ve passed out,” you insist, again, “I would’ve been okay.”

A flash of expression startles you, and Bokuto’s fury returns briefly enough to sharpen your nerves a second time.

“Don’t say you’ll be alright.” His fists are tightening around your shoulders. “Don’t say that. Not tonight.”

His hands are holding you upright, but they don’t stop you from instinctively shrinking further into yourself in shame.

“I’m sorry.”

Bokuto’s chest hitches mid-breath, and his hands release you in slow motion, lingering along the lines of your bones before reaching towards the almost forgotten plastic box. He takes a shot out, and holds it out towards you.

“Will you show me how to use this properly? Where do I inject?”

“Well…” if it means that much to him, “my left arm is all taken up, so it’ll be my right.” You move to roll up your sleeves, and feel a bit silly when you realize that you’re wearing a dress tonight, not your usual work clothes. “But… you… Kou, you’re sure you like me?”

“I love you.”

Your cheeks erupt to a magnificent temperature. “I- okay…” Put something into your mouth, and you’d probably be able to bake pottery.

Bokuto, on the other hand, only grins extra wide.

“Yeah. So, what about it?”

You swear that there’s steam; your forehead feels a lot more humid than usual. “I mean, if… if you love me, and you were the one that I’ve been worked over… technically, I think that I wouldn’t need the shots anymore.”

“What do you mean?” He lowers the injection, puzzled.

“It’s an  _unrequited_  love that causes the flowers,” you explain, “if… now that it’s requited, I should be alright.”

His brow twitches minutely at the word ‘alright’ leaving your mouth again, and squirms uncomfortably.

“There’s no harm in doing one more just in case, right?”

Truthfully, you can hardly blame him for not believing you when it comes to matters of your own health. Akaashi is a very reliable mother, and you’re a pretty terrible surrogate friend-sized kid.

You sigh, letting it seep through your teeth like a dragon. “I feel like I should be celebrating- or crying- and not discussing medical repercussions, though?”

Bokuto looks up from his examination of your right arm. “Want to date me?”

“Uhm. Uh.  _Yeah_.”

He beams. “Same! Now that we’ve solved that problem, I’m going to jab this in your arm, you’re gonna take a shower and we’re going to get some sleep.”

Nothing finds its way out of your throat. Bokuto cocks his head to one side, a knowing crinkle in his eyes.

“I’ll check on you, okay? I’m still kinda shell shocked, so I’m not like, super in touch with my feelings right now, but I don’t think anything has to change just yet. I’m not expecting anything right now, and you just puked up like, a whole baby shower arrangement. So take all the time you need. No rush, nothing.” Right. He’s right. Bokuto watches you mull his words over with exhaustion, and cups your cheek with one hand and leans in for a soft, final kiss. “I’m still Bokuto Koutarou,” he smiles broadly, “and I’m still your best friend. You can count on me.”

And you absolutely can. Leagues better than any hospital, Bokuto’s smile and cheesy lines can heal bones, burns and bruises alike with regular exposure, and your figurative crops are flourishing as he blinks guilelessly at you.

“I’ll leave it in your hands,” you answer.

“Okay.” Pleased with your acceptance, Bokuto seems to sit taller beside you, and glows a little more from his eyes. “You go clean yourself up, I’ll grab some of my clothes for you when you’re done.” He points towards his guest bathroom down the corridor. “Afterwards, we can give you your medication and I’ll call Akaashi. You can stay here tonight, and we’ll go get you checked out tomorrow. Good plan?”

“Yes, captain.” You raise your hand up in a small salute and Bokuto laughs. He leans in to press a kiss to your forehead, and wanders away to find some spare clothes for you with a warmth to his face.

You remember to close the lid of the plastic box before you get up. You follow the trail of Bokuto into an untouched bathroom, sparkling clean, and for a second you’re overwhelmed with the urge to simultaneously run from its perfection and to make as much of a mess out of it as possible.

You settle for taking a normal, sane shower.

The rest of the evening goes unimaginably smoothly, as Bokuto had taken it upon himself to make you as comfortable as possible, which meant that he’d left everything you’d possibly need out for you, and by being so busy doing so, you hadn’t been able to exchange much of a conversation. He’d forcibly taken the couch, almost shoving you onto his bed in his insistence that you’re the guest, and he’s gonna treat you right, and had zoomed out of the room immediately after.

His bedroom is the only part of the apartment that feels like Bokuto, and it’s that thought that allows the tiredness to seep through your muscles, and everywhere you turn, you’re soothed by a familiar scent.

It doesn’t surprise you either, to find that he’s stuck glow-in-the-dark stars onto his ceiling in the shapes of his favourite constellations.

Tomorrow’s an elusive thing, tonight barely hinging on reality, but as you point out the luminous yellow of a plastic Lupus, you consider that even if the world has shifted one step to the right, everything in it keeps the same radius. You’re still sleeping over at a friend’s, and you’re still going to the doctor’s tomorrow, and the night has still fallen.

Sleep comes slowly, but sooner or later your brain slows to the deep rumble of a starry sky replica. You fall asleep, and it’s been a long, long day.

* * *

Bokuto closes the car door behind you, and takes your hand before you can object. You’re stiff, fidgety, and he stands right by you in the scorching midday heat until you take enough breaths to lead the way. He falls into step beside you, letting you pull him, fingers laced and tightened, through the doors of the hospital.

He has to pull you out of your reverie when the speakers finally call your name, but you get to your feet without stumbling.

When the doctor calls ‘come in’ from the other side of the baby blue door, you feel Bokuto bump into you slightly when he dodges a quick wheelchair down the corridor. A brave smile curls itself against your cheeks, and you slide the door open.

This time, it’s okay.


	65. Kageyama tries to understand Mystic Messenger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by squashedmandarins:
>
>>   
> hellooo! so i had this idea that i have in my head about tobio's s/o playing mysme and him being surprisingly okay with her playing it and i would really love it in a scenario!!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: For some reason, I listened to Last Christmas in order to write this. Yeah, I don’t get me either. I entered a really chill state of mind trying to come up with this, so I hope it comes across! And doesn’t seem like I just did this willy nilly. Anyway, I hope you like it!_

“Is that-” Kageyama leans over the mess of pillows that surround you on the bed, his feet pressing against the edge of his desk so precariously that a light push would tip him over entirely. You notice none of this. “Is that a picture of me?”

“Wha- who?” You answer with your head tilted towards your fiance, but your eyes are permanently glued to the phone’s screen. “You’re on my screensaver, yeah.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He kicks off the table. You jump at the dull thud when the chair hits the floor, and everything around you bounces when Kageyama collapses on the other side of the pillow barricade. Reaching out a finger from a strange body position, he hovers over your screen. “I saw a picture just now. Are you chatting with someone? Did you send my picture to them?”

That makes you put down your phone. “You don’t sound too bothered by it, if it were?”

“I’m not unattractive.”

“And I remember the days when you’d get embarrassed whenever I told you that.” Kageyama doesn’t look ruffled in the slightest, and pouts just a tiny bit when you reach over to poke his cheek. “You’re not unattractive,” you agree.

“So?” He twists even further until he’s almost upside down and peering intently at your phone. “Which photo was it?”

You grin widely. “Wanna see?”

Kageyama looks at you for a long while, his face a perfect balance between confusion and suspicion, because you’re never this chipper about sharing your phone. But, he nods anyway, and you get back to what you were doing before.

You press next.

_Jumin Han: Haha. I don’t get fan letters like you do._

_ZEN: Well… that’s true._

“Fan letters?” asks Kageyama, surprised. “You’re friends with a celebrity?”

_Jumin Han: I only get checks._

“Oh  _damn_ ,” Kageyama whispers. You burst instantly into uncontrollable laughter at the line, and Kageyama doesn’t flinch even when you begin to use him as a slapping board. “That was a sick burn. This guy is vicious!”

“Yeah,” you gasp in-between peals, “that’s Jumin for you.”

Nudging you with an elbow, Kageyama leans in to murmur into your ear, “who’s this Jumin guy? He can talk like this to a celebrity?”

“Well.” You consider handing the phone over to Kageyama for him to find out himself, but you glance at the intense gleam in his eyes and realize that he’s utterly serious. You clear your throat, and school your features back to neutrality. “Jumin is a CEO. That’s why he doesn’t care what he says.”

“He sounds like me. Without the CEO part.” Kageyama looks up at you. “Or at least, he sounds like what you guys say I sound like.”

“You’re a bit direct,” you admit, “but you’re a lovely guy, Tobio.” When a pink flush dusts his cheeks prettily at your statement, you can’t resist but reach over and give him a quick peck on the nose. It doesn’t help his blush at all, but he looks too pleased to mind being embarrassed. “And you’re every bit as handsome as Jumin.”

“O-oh?” Kageyama has half his face covered with a hand, and you have to hold in your giggle at the adorable sight he makes. “So you’re comparing me to another guy? Are you trying to get me jealous?”

“Not at all,” you smile, “just stating facts.”

Kageyama doesn’t look too convinced. “Show me his face.”

Scrolling back out to the main menu, you click on his photo album (“you have an album??”) and press your phone into Kageyama’s face.

“Satisfied?”

“That’s the picture I saw! He’s- he’s… an anime character…” Kageyama fades out, his eyes blown wide from incredulity. “I thought you were in a chat group with some really high class people! Is this a  _game_?”

“It’s not just  _any_  game,” you insist, “I’m actually running a charity here! Also these messages pop up all the time so I literally have no time to live my life, so that’s different.”

Kageyama looks like he’s just discovered aliens. “Is this why I keep hearing those beeps at night, and why you’re always texting at really random times?”

“Yup.” You pause and glance worriedly at your fiance. “You didn’t think I was cheating on you, did you?”

“Nope.” Kageyama takes the phone from you gently, and taps back into your save file. “I just thought you were crazy. If my friends messaged me at three in the morning, I wouldn’t reply.”

“You don’t reply anyway, Tobio.”

“True. But still.”

You watch attentively as Kageyama clicks through all the calls, all the messages, and all the chat logs for each day. He stares at your screen as if someone’s written a novel on it, and makes the occasional face when 707 types.

“I think I get it.” He clicks back into the most recent chatroom and hands the phone back to you. “Is this a dating game?” 

“Mhm,” you say, impressed, “how do you know?”

Kageyama shrugs, but you can catch the slight smugness on the edge of his lips. “Might’ve seen my sister play something like this once or twice.” Suddenly he shifts closer, upper body stretched out across the bed and dangerously close to your face. A predatory glint in his eyes tells you that you’re not getting off this easy until he’s found out everything he wants to know about this. “So, who are you dating? I don’t get what that 707 guy is talking about.”

You try, you really do, but you end up bursting out laughing again, and Kageyama waits for you to finish cracking up at his expense with a tight patience.

“You  _would_ find him weird,” you say. “You two are like, totally opposite.”

“What’s so cool about space? Why is he always talking about space?”

“Why do you always talk about volleyball?”

Sulkily, Kageyama doesn’t comment anymore on 707.

With a good mood dancing around your head, you open your body position a little more so that Kageyama can see what’s going on in the game without having to contort himself further. 

_Jumin Han: I was just about to make pancakes for a beautiful lady._

_Jumin Han: Isn’t it quite funny,_

_Jumin Han: that we’re both logged in the messenger when we’re at the same place?_

Jolting backwards, Kageyama looks around the room with a panicked expression until you tap on his shoulder, and he deflates. There’s no hiding your grin now.

“I forgot,” he sighs.

“I’m dating Jumin Han,” you say instead, and Kageyama nods. Raising up a hand, he runs his fingers through your hair the way he knows you like it. The pads of his fingers rub against your scalp in soothing, gentle movements and you let out a soft whine before melting into his touch.

“The guy who looks like me, right?” He hums, pondering your choice. “At least you’ve got good taste. And he’s making you pancakes, so he’s treating you well.”

“Mhmm,” you moan happily, “he treats me very well. I’m like a princess. I got a ton of presents for Valentine’s day.”

“Is he not marrying you yet? What is he dating you for?”

“ _Well_ , he  _likes_  me, so I think that’s a pretty good reason.” You frown at Kageyama. “But don’t you worry, we’re married already.”

“Oh.” Looking vaguely chastised, Kageyama looks past your eyes and at a focus point somewhere between the phone and your blanket. “I guess he’s a good guy, then.”

“He is.”

Neither of you say anything for a few minutes, with only the regular blipping of notifications breaking the silence. After a while, Kageyama shifts uneasily in his position, and prods at you with a finger.

“Hm?” You answer without looking.

“What’s it called?”

Puzzled, you tell him. “Mystic Messenger.”

“Okay.”

With a great heave, Kageyama pushes himself off his prone position and picking his chair back up, sits back in his seat by the desk. At least several more minutes pass, without him saying anything to you, and you figure that he’s back at work until it’s time for bed. That is, until a familiar jingle resounds in the quiet room, and you snap upwards to stare, agape, at Kageyama.

Almost as if sensing your stare, he turns, slowly, to meet you with a determined face.

“The Zen guy seems interesting.”

You burst into fresh peals of laughter, and rising from your pillowy prison, you kiss Kageyama soundly on the lips until he drops his phone onto his desk, forgotten, and a new heat steams from his face. You pull away after an age, satisfied and glowing with amusement. “Have fun, Tobio.”

His mouth twists with an ingrained bashfulness, but he smiles briefly and turns back to focus on his newly downloaded game.

“I’ll do my best.”


	66. Oikawa's s/o takes care of him after injury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by monkey-d-rima:
>
>>   
> domo~! may i request oikawa's girlfriend who has dislocated her shoulder (playing volleyball) so he basically pampers her all throughout the day feeding her lunch, carrying her bag, taking her notes and so on but other guys are also trying to worry over her ( bcuz she's also a little popular) when tooru isn't looking?? please and thanks  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: A refreshing change of pace for me after so much serious writing! I hope you find this funny, because I tried. :D Thanks for waiting!_

“It should be fine,” you insist, “the orthopedist lady already set it back where it’s supposed to go. My arm isn’t about to fall off any second, I promise.”

“How can you promise something you can’t control?” That isn’t Tooru’s main argument- he’s got an arsenal of those- but it’s a sound counter that would be wasted if not used. “Now, we’re almost at school, so you’re going to take it easy. You’re not going to get me when you need help so I’m just going to have to lounge about your classroom in my spare time.”

“Oh for- Tooru, really?”

He looks at you sternly, brows furrowed without any consideration for his milky complexion and hopes that the message goes through, exactly how serious he is about it.

“Don’t take sports injuries lightly. The bell’s going to ring soon, you better hurry along.”

And although Tooru can feel the exasperated look you’re attempting to visually punch into him, he doesn’t allow himself to dawdle. There are tasks to be done, plans to be made, and he’s about to set into motion the biggest hustle the third years have ever known.

And at that thought, there’s no holding back the satisfied smile that creeps onto his face. Yes, it’s time that you softened and let yourself be pampered, and for Tooru to finally unleash his fearsome boyfriend powers so that you know exactly how amazing he really is.

* * *

Taking notes, in his opinion, is just the basics. Part of him wants to scoff and shrugs his shoulders proudly, because he’d do this for any friend- only that he wouldn’t, not Oikawa, so he settles for hissing out orders. It’s fate’s divine punishment for being so good looking, that he isn’t in the same class as you are. You’re two rooms away, approximately six broad steps, and a whole morning until he gets to see you again.

So, he catches all the men- yes, he’s noticed- that hover around, or behind, or in front of you. It’s sort of a spherical radius, to be quite honest, and one by one, he whispers to them that you’re injured, your right arm specifically, and your admirers crane their necks to spy the small sling that you’ve slipped your arm through. It’s a sleek, black strap that slides over a shoulder, dipping down the middle of your chest to support your limp arm.

It takes a while for them to stop staring, but Oikawa manages it with several practiced scowls. Even the teacher remarks, pleasantly surprised, that all the boys seem to be paying extra effort into their notes that day. Class gets dismissed ten minutes earlier with a glowing teacher striding out of the classroom first, ready to share this Christmas miracle with her colleagues over some sandwiches and tea.

Oikawa, however, is ready. Holding out a hand, he receives stack after stack of neatly printed notepaper, smoothed out and stapled at the corners. When he spies you making your way out of the classroom, he clicks his tongue urgently in some animalistic morse code, and the crowd disperses like children at the mention of ‘vegetables’.

You notice Tooru and smile warmly, none the wiser.

* * *

You’re definitely wiser when lunch rolls around. Afternoons at the canteen are always spent with Tooru anyway, because neither of you have parents free enough to carve octopus weiners for Rilakkuma shaped lunchboxes, so five minute ramen it is.

“How was class?” Oikawa asks sweetly, his chopsticks poised in the air next to a particularly large slice of barbequed pork.

You pause, mid bite. “You never ask me that,” you frown, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all,” Oikawa answers blithely, looking anything but truthful.

“You’re terrible at lying to anyone who isn’t your fan, Tooru.”

“How mean!” He clutches at his heart. “Are you saying that you don’t appreciate me?”

“That’s… not quite it.” You stare at his chopsticks. They’re reaching for the pork, squeezing in a few noodles in for good measure, and Tooru raises them into the air. “You’re going to feed me that, aren’t you?”

“Open up,” he smiles widely. Overall it’s about seventy percent kind, and thirty percent just rather suspicious. You shake your head slowly.

“No thank you. We’re rather public, don’t you think?”

“We’ve done worse,” he laughs, “there’s no need to be shy.”

“I’m not an exhibitionist,” you whisper, slightly mortified. Oikawa doesn’t speak in soft tones. “Please don’t make it sound like we’re into that sort of thing.”

Oikawa only smiles even brighter. “Open up,” he repeats.

“I-  _please_ , Tooru.”

“You’re eating ramen with a  _fork_ , dear.”

You’ve been around him long enough to hear a threat in his endearments, so with a heavy sigh, you drop the fork onto your tray and open your mouth. Oikawa glows with satisfaction when his carefully selected slices of pork are placed soundly onto your tongue, and you begin to chew.

You keep your eyes firmly shut. Vision is not necessary to feel the death stares on your back.

Oikawa, on the other hand, leans back into his seat, feeling quite proud, and smiles more smugly for his audience.

* * *

A firm looking classmate of yours pushes out of his seat and reaches for the door before you can even get to it. His friend, materialized from another class, frames the other side and pushes away any brooms and boxes for a clear path. Someone taps you on your shoulder, and you turn to see the boy who sits behind you, holding out a textbook you had forgotten with a soft smile on his face. Faintly, you realize that you’ve never seen him smile before.

“Thank you,” you say, touched, and all three of them nod in acknowledgement. You walk out of the classroom as if leaving your own Diamond Jubilee.

“Oh, Too-”

He does it gracefully, you’ll give him that. Oikawa swipes his arm as if executing a service ace, and your bag disappears off your shoulder in a blink.

“You’re welcome,” he smirks, and motions for you to follow him down the corridor. He leads, you note, and you amble wearily behind him, taking the time to admire some of the rusty hue of fresh autumn leaves along the third floor windows.

He ties your shoelaces for you by the lockers. You hear camera shutters clicking.

Several people wave goodbye to you shyly, a bit wary about Oikawa, and when the third boy shouts a ‘see you tomorrow!’, your boyfriend- or bodyguard- falls back to your pace and wraps his fingers tightly around yours.

Although his head is held high, nose pointed at the treetops out of embarrassment, you catch the reluctant tinge against his cheekbones. It’s been one of the longer days you’ve had so far, and frankly, you’re willing to let the blush be the straw on the camel’s back.

Patiently, you wait until the two of you clear the front gates, even past the first junction, before you tug him past the road crossing and into a small corner of a nearby park. When Oikawa looks mildly stunned at your sudden burst of determination, you don’t give him enough time to process any of it.

You reach up, with your battered arm, and pull him down by his tie to meet you halfway. Your left arm reaches behind his waist to press him closer, and you push yourself up onto your tiptoes to slot your lips more tightly across his. They’re slightly chapped, and you make it a point to moisten them well before you fall back to your heels.

Carefully, you pry your bag out of his grip and swing it back onto your shoulder. Oikawa’s own shoulders heave from the shock, frozen to the spot despite you having jogged over to the edge of the sidewalk.

A beatific smile stretches over your warm cheeks.

“Hurry up, Tooru!”


	67. Tsukishima and Bokuto with an s/o who has DID

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Mental illness, Dissociative Identity Disorder
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> it kinda just frustrates me to see the media portray [DID] in that way because i would hate to know someone or even be someone with that disorder and see such a portrayal of who i am as a person. so due to this frustration i was wondering if you could od a scenario with tsukishima and bokuto where their fem s/o has did and just how the boys would help them or something (you can let your mind wander) or maybe their s/o sees the trailer and gets really upset about it  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments:Hey there! I’m sorry it’s been such a long time, but I’m really thankful for your patience. Here’s your request, and I hope you like it. For all those who didn’t see the first part of the ask, this request is about DID, and the movie trailer for ‘Split’ with James McAvoy.  
> _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a quick disclaimer- I have no experience with DID. I have never had it, never interacted with someone with it, so I do not claim to represent this illness accurately. However, this was my major (and hopefully my future career), and I have dug up old notes and several textbooks to get my facts as straight as possible. Because this is fic, there will be several things that I do not explain directly. If there are any questions or concerns about DID (in this scenario or otherwise), I will do my best to answer questions through asks.

“You know,”  **Tsukishima**  hears you snarl before the mug smashes against the wall in fifteen different pieces, “I wish I could twist my body like some fucking wendigo when Hana takes over. Be the monster they think we  _really_  are.”

He pads out of the kitchen, turning off the stove before he does, and hands you an oven mitten. You slip it on, reluctantly, and make your way towards the mess that you’ve left next to the hanging bookshelf. When you glance up angrily at your supposed boyfriend’s face, there isn’t much emotion except for focus. It’s one thing you’ve always hated about him, and if you cared less than you did about your host, you don’t think you’d have given him the time of day.

“Be careful,” he tells you sternly, “I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

You stick your middle finger up at him from underneath the glove. A small smile starts to crack his thinly pressed lips. “If you’re so worried, why don’t you pick it up then? Is it fun watching me on my knees, you sick fuck?”

As if on cue, he pulls out his already gloved hand from behind his back and waves it at you, deadpan. “I’m not into sharp object play.” Very slowly, he gets to his knees beside you and begins to pick out the smaller shards from the plush carpeting. “But,” he adds, “you know Kaede won’t like it when she finds out that you’ve broken something against the wall. That was her favourite mug.”

“Yeah? She’ll only know if you rat me out to her,” you spit. But your hand is already moving, reluctantly, untangling large shards of porcelain from dark green fibres.

Tsukishima’s expression hasn’t changed in the slightest. Sometimes you really, really hate how nothing ever gets to him like you want it to. Like he’d expected all of this to begin with, and plotted a course of potential comebacks to put you in your place.

It’s never very fun anymore when it’s your turn.

“Tell me at least you agree with me, Tsukishima.” He hums to let you know he’s listening. “I’m angry for a good reason, dammit.”

“It’s a good reason,” he agrees. He holds out the plastic bag for you to drop the last big piece in. “It makes for a good movie, but it’s not good for representation.”

“I’m not a fucking murderous psychopath.”

“You’re not,” he agrees again. “You’re a bit murderous, but not a psychopath.”

“I’m only murderous when people piss me off. If they want me to be a nicer person, then they should stop pissing me off. Sound logic.”

To this, he doesn’t reply. He only laughs, a bit brightly with his twisted sense of humour, and motions for you to get up with him. “Grab the vacuum, will you?”

You do. You don’t mind vacuuming so much; it makes such a wonderfully raucous noise that you can easily imagine it’s the sound of a building crashing down a block over. Tsukishima gives you a look as you plug it into the socket, and claps on his pair of noise cancelling headphones. You switch the machine on with pleasure.

It’s a good catharsis, as an alternative to breaking more things. You’d shattered the television once out of rage, and the pleasure that had coursed through you had been unreal- so much that it had become an addiction, a contagion that kept you up for longer and longer as the fury liquidized anything else inside you and pooled into a well of happy anger. Kaede, your host, had given Tsukishima a stern talking to after that, and you’d been under wraps ever since. No more breaking household items without cleaning it up. Needless to say, you stopped breaking so many things.

With a click, quiet swam back into the lilac living room, and you drag the vacuum behind you back to the storage cupboard.

Tsukishima is there waiting for you. He holds out a mug, identical to the one that you had broken, and at your surprised gape, a gentler crease to his eyes begins to crinkle and he takes a step forwards, pressing the cup into your open hand.

You wrap your fingers around it, feeling the same grooves again.

“You’re not going to rat me out.”

“Nope.”

“How many spares do you have in there?” You demand accusingly, but Tsukishima’s smile doesn’t falter.

“Enough,” he answers. Slowly, and obviously, his palms curls around the small of your back and tugs you closer, keeping you at a distance comfortable still. You weren’t as close to him as your other alters were, and he knew your boundaries.

“You have the most beautiful anger out of them all, did you know that?”

“I-” your tongue sticks to the sides of your mouth, and words become hard to find. “You mean that?”

“Yeah,” he breathes lowly, and something behind his eyes melt and swirl in messages that you’re not used to reading. It’s the first time those messages are addressed to you. “But don’t tell the others.” He smirks at you slyly. “Don’t rat me out.”

“I won’t,” you promise. And then, “who the hell do you take me for, anyway? Some fucking tattle tale?”

Laughing, Tsukishima motions for you to get on with the storage closet, popping back into the living room to put the mug where it had originally been.

An alien warmth flushes through you; your cheeks, your fingers, your toes, and your chest feels irritatingly tight against your ribs. You take several deep breaths, lean the vacuum carefully against the side of the closet, and shut it behind you. You stand a little straighter, edges of your lips a little softer, and the room seems at least four times brighter than it had been before.

“Kei?” You call. He’s rarely anywhere out of sight, unless it’s just been Iishi, who needs his space to be angry. “Are you here?”

Tsukishima strolls back into view, hanging out of the doorway into the kitchen. He’s looking softer than usual, and somehow your cheeks mirror his mood, and you walk up to him with a warm gaze.

“I’m here, Kaede,” he murmurs. “I’ve bought groceries. Want to start dinner?”

 

* * *

 

On the small stretch of wall that marks the distance between the bedrooms and the living room, four calendars cover it. One is larger than the rest, with lots of spare space and small multicoloured scribbles in each square. Thursday has marked two movies and one shopping excursion and on Friday, a double anniversary date with Kuroo and his fiancée.

Two smaller calendars frame the largest one in the centre. One the left,  **Bokuto** has his two and a half practices jotted down for Monday, and to the right, you have one hair appointment and one doggy day care pickup for Tuesday. They’re both in different colours, and different handwriting scrawled all over them.

The smallest and last one sits furthest down the corridor. It’s hung neatly right beside the master bedroom’s doorframe, and each month, the pages are filled in assorted colours. There aren’t many jottings on it, only small multicoloured circles in a countdown. Circles mark special days, and straight crosses count the days passed. Both types of writing are dotted along the frames. There’s a small smiley face and a cat face that decorates the header of this month. It’s October, going onto November. The days are getting shorter, and the air is getting chillier.

There’s a big circle around today’s date. It’s in lime green, autumn’s favourite colour.

“Hey.” You feel Bokuto’s firm arms wrap themselves like garden vines around your hunched shoulders. “You’re thinking that again, aren’t you?”

“When don’t I?” You joke weakly, but it’s true. He’s right. You twist your head around, and straighten your back the way you know he prefers you to sit. It makes you look prouder, happier, and Bokuto’s favourite time of day is when you’re both.

“I got this, you know? I’m good at taking care of people!” Without his hands at his disposal, he thumps his chest against your back to make the manly ‘umph’ sound. It makes you smile. For now, everything still makes you smile quite easily. “I know,” you reassure him. “I’m just anxious, like always.”

“It’s been four years,” Bokuto mumbles into the crook of your neck. You lean backwards into his firm body and let yourself reassemble in his shape. “I’ve got the hang of this. You don’t have to feel bad anymore.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling bad,” you shrug, and he shifts along with the motion. “But it’s a lot more comforting now that we’ve planned well for it.”

“Mhmm.” The vibrations send shivers up your spine. Bokuto runs wiry fingers over your gooseflesh. “I’m good at keeping you cheerful.”

He’s good at keeping everyone cheerful, always. Even when he’s down, Bokuto never misses the chance to pick himself up just in time to bring someone back up to spirits, and his sad hooting is one of the most heartbreakingly adorable sounds you’ve ever heard. You’ve got it recorded on your phone.

“Let’s run over the game plan again,” you suggest with a small smile. “It’ll make me less nervous.”

“Okay.” He plops down next to you with his legs crossed. “So, lots of blankets. Lots of hot drinks. Don’t wake you up too early, and don’t get mad when you’re crying about dumb things.” He frowns at that point. “I think it’s horrible that anyone could get mad at you crying. And nothing you cry about is ever dumb.”

“Last year I sobbed for two days straight because I lost a penguin keychain.”

“Imagine what the penguin keychain must feel!” Bokuto looks scandalized. “That’s not dumb!”

 _You love him so_. It’s at the tip of your tongue, pushing at your lips to escape in a hushed whisper, but it’s not something Aki would say. Haru and Natsu, most definitely. Aki- autumn- you- settle for pressing against him with your side. “I hope we find the penguin again someday,” you muse. “What an adventure.”

Bokuto looks thrilled at the prospect of sharing adventures with a small plastic charm, but he clears his throat and keeps his fingers held out. “Let Kuroo and Akaashi know beforehand. I’ll keep noises to a minimum, and let our landlord know that quiet hours are early for the first month. Your workplace should’ve got the memo pretty early on. They’re nice.”

“They are,” you nod dazedly. It’s a cocoon of warmth around Bokuto at all times, and with the small snuggie pooled at your feet, it’s the right gradient of temperature that lulls you to into a dream. “If worst comes to worst, my therapist has open hours through the day for any emergencies.”

“Gotcha. I hope there aren’t any emergencies.”

“They’re hard on you, I’m sorry, Kou.”

“Don’t mind me! I was mostly worried for you-” as if proving his point, he runs his fingers along the trail of your scalp, back and forth. “I didn’t know that our neighbours would celebrate a birthday with fireworks.”

He pauses then, and leans down to hover closely by your face. You can feel the warmth radiating of his sun-kissed bronze. “I think you’ve already come so far. You used to hate having men around you. That broke my heart.”

You’re not sure if you’ll ever stop feeling guilty about that, and Bokuto’s face still shows old hurt that has scarred his heart and left him stronger. You know the guilt will amplify soon. Soon, you will fear Bokuto, yet love him intensely, hate yourself and want to carve out a small cave to live by your lonesome.

You will hate the days, miss the nights, love your father, and despise the sound of deep laughter.

It’s four thirty in the afternoon, and the sky is white from snow. The whirring of relentless winds outside and the memory of deep, angry grunting stirs sleeping fears from inside you.

Bokuto waits, silently, and holds you close to him.

He listens as your breathing speeds up, coming in short bursts, and your grip on your own legs tense. The shoulder you have resting against him crushes against him in a desperate bid for his pain, and his comfort combined. He waits for you to settle down, and get your bearings.

“Here,” he shuffles further away and swirls a massive blanket around your frame before you can make a sound. The fear in your eyes subside in small bursts, and holding back his urge to touch your cheek, Bokuto lifts up a mug of hot cocoa in front of your face. You take it in both hands, without saying a word, and sip at it.

“Fuyu.” Your eyes flicker up at the sound of your name. Bokuto is smiling at you with aching affection, and a small heat rises to your cheeks. You don’t mind so much when it’s his lips your names are falling from. “Hello, again.”


	68. Noya, Tanaka, Kenma, Bokuto and Suga comes home to s/o attempted suicide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Self harm, suicide
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hello! could i request a scenario where sugawara, tanaka, kenma, and bokuto come home earlier than they're supposed to and walk in on their s/o after she tries to commit suicide with a razor, thinking that her bf won't be home until later, but is still alive when they find her, but just barely? it's up to you for the ending, i'm just in the mood for some tears and angst. ^^;  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Since she’s barely alive, there wasn’t much I could do from her perspective. There isn’t much dialogue in this one, but I hope it’s still interesting all the same from inside the boys’ heads. Thanks for waiting this long!_

**Sugawara** Koushi knows he will never be able to forget. No matter how much he tries to bury the redness of everything into the deepest parts of his boundless depths, he knows that all it takes is one moment of weakness for it to come hurtling back. It’s a wave, it’s a lightning, it’s a flash flood of staring death in the face.

He loves you, he does. He loved you, he loves you, and he will still love you.

That makes him all the more terrified. He dreams of it on the bad nights, when the birds don’t call during haunted hours, and his phone turns itself on when the battery is done recharging.

The floor is red. The first thing he sees, is red. The last thing he sees is still red, and it’s no longer smeared only on the white tile. When he moves you, his hands are trembling, shaking from too much adrenaline in too little body, and he drops you almost immediately back into the water. He’s not sure if you’ll get worse if he shifts you.

You don’t say a word. Suga does this alone, and boy does he feel alone. There’s a whole floating body next to his raw knees, but you won’t respond even if he presses against the sides of your windpipe until you choke. He’s not sure if you’re conscious enough to suffocate.

He can hear his own breath hit countless notes. Softer breaths, harsher breaths, and breaths that take so long to steady that he’s no longer sure if he’s screaming or singing. He’s not crying, however. There’s already too much water in the room without him crying.

He picks you up, like he always does when the two of you are fooling around, with his arms tucked below your nape and your knees. You’re heavier than usual. You’re dead weight against him, and if it had been a rougher day at work, he would have dropped you. Your fingers don’t link around his neck like they usually do to help with the strain.

The only thing that Suga can remember is that he needs to get you out of the water. He can’t stand to see more of it darken periodically, a small pond of maroon growing around your ragged arms, and he sets you on the couch that will never look the same again, and folds your wounds in towels. They stain red within minutes, and the small patches from hair dye soon become invisible.

He dials for an ambulance with the landline. It’s his voice and his fingers dialing, but the landline is shared.

The EMTs ask calmly if Suga would like to sit with you in the back of the ambulance. (“Are you her close kin?” “No,” he replies, “I’m not close enough.”) They let him be, with a large towel wrapped around his shoulders as if he was the one injured and dying on a bed. Maybe they can see that he is, and it’s Suga who hasn’t noticed.

He gets in his car after a glass of water, and drives to the hospital. He is asked if he needs medical attention when he pushes through the trauma center’s doors, and the nurses points down at his hands. Suga smiles, and wipes the blood off on his slacks. He tells her that it was nothing, just a nosebleed; he’s here for family.

And when Suga wakes up from this dream he gets at least once a month, he calls you immediately. Sometimes you answer sleepily, and sometimes you don’t pick up if you’ve set it on vibrate.

He doesn’t mind. He listens to your voicemail message, and he cries. And Suga does his best; he leaves a message that he loves you, praying that you’ll still be there to smile at him for it the next day.

 

* * *

 

He’s a  _man_. And that’s more than sex and gender- it’s the chivalry, the bravery, the boldness that  **Tanaka** has promised to inherit of the Earth: a man to make the name proud.

When his eyes finally adjust to the elegant, earthy tones of your bathroom décor, and you, at the end of it, in the bathtub with a soft smile on your face that can only bring back memories of lazy afternoons together- his vision blurs, and his chest jumps into pained sobs.

The tears don’t stop even when he’s finished heaving into his hands, not even when he thumps against his chest in a desperate bid to stop the hyperventilating. They keep coming, streaming down his face and flooding into all of the laugh-lines along his mouth until the saline drips from his neck down into his navy shirt.

It’s perhaps five minutes- ten at most, but it’s enough for Tanaka to feel as if he’s failed you, and failed himself. It’s precisely five or ten minutes too long for him to take action, but it’s simply not possible- his hands are clenching and unclenching as he tries to will himself to stop trembling from the shock. His head has been dipped and his mouth open in a soundless scream, and no amount of willpower can force his face back up to look at you.

Still, it’s not the fear that immobilizes him. It’s the onslaught of sadness, bone deep sadness that sneaks into his marrow from whereabouts unknown. It eats at his muscles and his joints, and he trips over his own feet as he stumbles towards your still body resting along the bathtub.

There are no bloodstains, no splashes, nothing out of the ordinary at all except for the fact that the water is still running, and upon closer inspection, an eerie rusty colour from blood left too long.

Carefully, he sticks his hand in and gives it a little wave. The burgundy swirls around where his joints touch the water, a soft, watery hurricane of what keeps you alive in a circle small enough to fit into his palm. The water is warm, the hot water tap running just enough for the room temperature to cool it down. There is still a brighter red that seeps readily from the wounds along your arms.

Tanaka looks down. Your inner thighs are in even worse shape.

Right now, he can’t imagine how much pain you must have been in and how long it must have taken for you to accustom yourself to it and for a smile to finally fight its way out of the fear you must have felt.

If you felt fear at all.

It doesn’t matter, because Tanaka is definitely feeling enough now for the both of you. Perhaps he is still crying, he’s not sure because it all tastes salty in his mouth, but the reality of how easily you are from dying from quite literal exsanguination spurs him to grip you with all the strength he can and haul you out of the tub.

The red spills over in a great wave, and some of it gets onto his shirt. His pants are done for, and he doesn’t think that he’ll ever be able to scrub the blood off his hands after this.

Your body is too lax for him to support you for long in his arms, so he heaves you onto his back, and carries you to the kitchen. When he places you onto the table, like a corpse, his heart seizes and Tanaka is crippled for a good thirty seconds from pain in his chest.

The first aid is torn apart with his slimy, shaking hands, and he takes countless deep breaths over and over against to make sure his fingertips don’t dig accidentally into your wounds as he wraps the white gauze over it repeatedly. He tries his best to concentrate on the fact that he’s helping you, not wrapping you up into a mummification of yourself.

He chooses not to change the clothes for either of you. He stumbles out, with you draped over his back like a rag doll, arms lolling from side to side with each step. The door closes shut behind him with a soft squeak, as if nothing of import had happened inside that apartment. The ever-changed apartment.

It’s five pm on a weekday, and people are slowly getting off work. Your location is in a small residential pocket in the middle of a metropolis, and Tanaka has to pointedly focus on the goal in front of him to avoid the accusing stares people across the street level at him at all times. Maybe one of them even calls the police- he isn’t bothered by that.

A hospital, unfamiliar to both of your in your usual healthy states, sits two blocks away. An ambulance would have taken longer to dispatch, Tanaka knows, and he fumbles his way into the ER with his blood-soaked attire. Your blood has seeped through the bandages and cleanly onto his shirt.

The nurses spirit you away from his touch when they spy the both of you, and Tanaka is left alone next to the Emergency Surgical Care room in the waiting area, the warm red of your arms over his body printed onto the back of his shirt.

A nearby nurse comes and places a caring hand on his shoulder before it hits six, and assures him that it’s alright to cry. Everybody does.

Tanaka only nods weakly and places a weary hand on the dry flakes of blood on his shoulder blades. He has run out of tears.

 

* * *

 

 **Kenma** doesn’t like secrets. It makes him nervous, irrationally angry, and the despair on his face shows for days afterwards. He knows he shouldn’t mind them so much, because everybody has some, but this time- this time- Kuroo had confided in him things that he never would have guessed. He thinks that there’s no way anyone could blame him for feeling frightened.

You’re kind, you’re a nighttime beauty that will forgive him his failures. Kenma hacks into your PC at work, and taps viciously at your search history.

Have you ever had the feeling of such disbelief, such fear and such sadness that it seems as if nothing around you exists? That you have entered a plane of incredible reality where it’s all your worst fears projected onto a buzzing screen?

This is the first time he has ever vanished in the middle of work. His coworkers whip their heads around to watch him rush down the corridor, his chair still swiveling in place. He’s a good employee, they believe that he must have had a bad stomachache, or a family emergency. He’ll finish his debugging earlier than them still.

But Kenma no longer remembers where he is. He barely remembers who he is- this frail, pieced-together identity that you had built together for him, and he grabs a coworker’s motorcycle without asking.

Everything slows down for him when he lays his hand on the doorknob. Time jumps along with his pulse, thudding so erratically that he could have created an alternate timeline altogether where he had never talked to Kuroo about anything in the first place.

You had forgotten to turn off the water in the bath. Or at least, that’s what Kenma thinks, because he doesn’t want to imagine an actual reason, a probable reason, because that would mean that this is all true.

The water pooling around his ankles is warm, a comfortable hot-springs temperature in winter, and the closer he gets to the bathroom, the pinker it gets.  _It’s dye, it’s dye, it’s the sun, it’s dye._ It’s three in the afternoon, too far from sunset hues.

When he finds your dressed, pale body in your bathroom, his eyes pause on your face. An overwhelming, excruciating affection boils his chest alive, and all he can think of is how much he loves you, how much you mean to him- if you were nailed to a wall with your eyes gouged out, nothing of his feelings would change.

His first reaction makes him hurl into the open toilet.

It takes him three minutes to pull himself together, and squeeze the vomit off the ends of his bangs.

Kenma tries to pick you up, but you’re too heavy for him as you are- limp. He tries to take you by the arm and drag you out of the bath, but his fingers feel the gashes of moist flesh in the folds of loose skin, and he almost screams. He ends up tipping you half out of the water, folding your arms on the top of your expressionless face so that they stop feeding the red bath some more.

He calls Kuroo first. He’s greeted with a snarky laugh and the beeping of voicemail, and Kenma can’t believe that he would call his best friend instead of the emergency services.

He doesn’t say much when the men knock on the front door, composed and poised with their equipment tucked underneath their arms. They tell him to calm down, and not to worry, but Kenma is beyond worry. He has reached the untouchable plain of self-loathing and dissociation, and there is no protest when they bundle him into the ambulance too.

He calls Kuroo again when they ask him if there’s anyone else that is close to you. He calls your father after Kuroo doesn’t pick up for the second time. After they take you into the hospital, Kenma begins to call your close friends one by one.

Daichi is the one to arrive first. Your father follows closely behind him, looking ten years older than he really is. Both are crying soundlessly, and their voices break when they ask Kenma which room you’re in.

Kenma forgets to cry. He stays on the bench outside your room for the rest of the night, twirling his phone in his nimble hands.

 

* * *

 

The soft turquoise paper bag knocks against  **Bokuto** ’s knees as he walks, his fingers gripping the small rope handle with alternating lightness to his modern jazz tune. Fridays call for extra celebration, and celebrations always calls for cake. He hasn’t forgotten a Cake Friday yet, and he’s incredibly proud of the way your beam seems to reach your eyes each time you’re proven wrong- that you’re worth taking care of. And Bokuto can, and will, take care of you.

That’s why, when he starts to tap the numbers in to unlock your front door and there’s no pitter pattering of feet from the other side, he knows that there’s something wrong.

The feeling doesn’t start with an uneasy swirl of his gut- it ignites his nerves with a blaring siren in his mind that screeches at him that there is something incredibly, incredibly wrong with this afternoon. He lifts from his memory reserves your soft hands against his cheek and your low, shy voice welcoming him home to keep his fingers from slamming the wrong keys.

When he steps into the entryway, he can hear the sound of running water and the deep gurgling of a clear drain. It’s the only sound in the house; your usual music gone from the sound system in the living room, and Bokuto drops his Tiffany-coloured cake onto the floor. Two spoons clatter to one side and cracks.

This is part of his professional volleyball player job- constant vigilance, his calves tensing in practiced moves that stretches with the grace of a lifetime of passion- but today his feet drag behind him, a mire of fear and regrets and desperation that trickles into a cocktail of terror.

Bokuto has never been so afraid in his life.

But he doesn’t let himself admit that. He doesn’t let himself feel even the thinnest sliver of that fear, because in his ears, his conviction thuds down to his stomach. He cannot fail you.  _He cannot fail you._

He doesn’t know how long his breath stays stuck in his ribcage as time passes far enough for your body to rise and fall with a weak breath. Bokuto’s hands are soaked with dark crimson, but that doesn’t stop him from scrubbing his wrist against his eyes. All he can do is to be brave for you.

He tips his fingers against the pulse point on your neck, and slides them down to press your torn flesh back together. There is bone he can feel directly under the pads of his fingers, and he tears off his shirt and bundles what remains of your forearms into a cocoon of cloth. When he picks you up, arms now bound together, your head lolls grotesquely over his arm. The water in the bathtub has long passed from lukewarm to cool, and your body along with it. Bokuto presses you closer into him, desperately hoping that some of his warmth will seep back into you.

Setting you on your shared bed and puffing up blankets to tuck you into comfort, Bokuto drags the landline from its small seat on the kitchen counter into the bedroom. He dials the buttons without looking, his attention fixed on your pallid cheeks.

The line connects, and Bokuto tells them the address. The only context he bothers offering is ‘ambulance’.

His shirt has gone from a clear blue to a rich purple. There are no bandages left in the first aid kit underneath the sink, only a smattering of sesame street band-aids. Briefly, an image of a row of cheerful band-aids plastered in neat rows along the gashes on your arm flashes behind his eyes. He’d watch your skin knit back into the smooth plane it once was, and you’d laugh at him for his silliness when you wake up. You’d peel the plasters off one by one, folding them into neat squares.

The professionals peel off the shirt when they arrive and replace it with their bandaging. One of them eyes Bokuto warily, but offers him a seat beside your cot anyway.

He doesn’t know who to call that night. He slumps in the small couch in the corner of your hospital room and scrolls up and down his contacts list. You’re silent, as you’ve been all day.

He turns off his phone, and sets it on the table.

Bokuto knows he loves you. He knows he can be strong when he needs to be. But right now, Bokuto wishes that someone could come along and tell him that wanting to feel angrier, doesn’t make him a bad person.

 

* * *

 

 

 **Nishinoya**  hears the dog barking first. It’s a slight surprise, because together you had somehow picked the quietest dog out of all the puppies in the pen, and each time Nishinoya came home from work, he’d be given a cursory glance and then ignored.

It’s been a running gag through his tight circle of friends, and you’d be promptly at the other side of the door, freshly changed out of your work clothes into casual sleepwear, with a grin on your face to welcome him home.

He hurries with the lock, wondering if you must’ve come home too late to feed him this afternoon.

When he calls out your name, there’s no response, only a soft muffled echo through the linear flat and a Shiba Inu furiously howling in the corner. He’s still in the pen, and Nishinoya picks it up from underneath his arms, frowning.

The puppy barely spares him a glance and sprints towards the bathroom door, scratching for an opening.

The door here is locked too. He can feel his heartrate steadily beating faster in his chest as he jogs back into the living room and scrambling through the small pile of locks and trinkets to find the lost keys of old.

Perhaps a burglar. Maybe a broken mirror, and a locked door to protect the puppy from hurting himself on the shards.

Everything is as it should be when he creaks it open. The puppy doesn’t make a move to go in, not even a step beyond the boundary of the living room, and it falls silent. To Nishinoya, the world about him falls silent as well, along with the sudden lack of incessant barking.

You look only as if you’re asleep. Motionless in the half-filled bathtub, the surface doesn’t even ripple. The window is closed, only a single bathroom light on, and Nishinoya realizes why his puppy hasn’t shifted from his spot.

He’s never, in his entire life, expected to have to react to a scene like this. This is entirely different from making work decisions, financial crisis, an unexpected spike to the face- he can’t simply shift his position and holds his arms out for the disaster to bounce right back into someone else’s responsibility.

The first step is the hardest. Then he takes a second, then a third, and slowly as if trudging through a bog of his own dread, he comes to a halt on his knees in front of your body.

He runs pale fingers over the outline of your ribs, hoping for a single breath.

He keeps on waiting, and when the puppy suddenly barks, your diaphragm shifts upwards ever so slightly. Nishinoya grabs onto that shard of hope and doesn’t let go. He pulls your arms up, doing his best to ignore the sudden outpour of blood that’s pooled in your arteries from the gravity, and drags your dead weight onto his chest for purchase. He can feel the cooled blood seeping into his dress shirt, from the sides slowly into the centre.

You’re slightly shorter than him, and usually carrying you around is easy, filled with fresh peals of laughter and clandestine kisses. Nishinoya grows more and more unsure whether the weight on his chest is because of your body, or because of how little energy he suddenly seems to have.

He manages to put you securely into the dip of your shared sofa, and notices too late the fresh trail of blood that follows where your feet have dragged behind on the polished flooring. He takes great care in bandaging your crassly torn ankles with the closest fabric he can find.

The wait for the ambulance is the most agonizing ten minutes of his now miserable existence. Nishinoya can barely remember his own name as he, with numb, robotic movements, peels off strips of gauze from the untouched first aid kit and wraps it around what remains of your arms.

He can’t quite remember the feeling of looking forwards to coming home to you as well as he did before. It slips away with each ticking second, and another fracture of his heart dies a slow death. If he had to put it into words, it would be everything that he’d feel if he were more alive, crushed unceremoniously together underneath a great boulder and mashed up until its dust drains back into his capillaries.

It barely frightens him when he tries to pull up some semblance of sorrow, and finds it trickling through his dead fingers back into a gaping hollow.

He watches, without colour and without sound, as the EMTs burst through your door and hurriedly tilts your head here and there. One of them asks him if he’s the one who put the bandages on her, to which he nods faintly. They give him a short reassurance, and begin to peel them back off her skin, leaving a soft, red puddle of used and forgotten fabric on the floor.


	69. Tsukishima with empathetic s/o who can't say no

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by Suga-anon:
>
>>   
> hmm what about a scenario with tsukki where his s/o (girl!) where she's genuinely so empathetic and sweet and she can never say no when people ask her to help them so she's always going around and helping people at school whenever they ask and sometimes people manipulate her into doing things? i just thought personality wise it's such a juxtaposition from what tsukki is normally like and his reaction and everything  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I’m sorry this turned out angsty. Tsukishima is one of the easiest characters for me to write because he is more or less myself when I become tired of being nice. So I ended up drawing this from something personal, because I know how it feels to love someone who loves everyone else just as much. Thank you for waiting, and it’s been far too long, Suga-anon. :)_

Tsukishima finds her, again, by the decently sized bread stand next to the first floor canteen. Although he’s by certain standards, freakishly tall, his girlfriend most definitely isn’t, and searching for an unevenly coloured mop of hair in a sea of high school students is not as easy at it sounds.

The stuffed melon bread is almost sold out, and it reminds him that he’s wasted his entire lunch break on this stupid man-search instead of eating.

He knocks several people away with his sharp elbows, shooting them a dull stare when they turn to protest, and slinks through the crowd. He reaches out above the sea of heads and taps her on the shoulder. She spins around, a guilty frown on her face.

“I know… what you’re going to say,” she begins, “I’m sorry, Tsukki.”

It incenses him. Tsukishima, originally quite calm and merely ready to lecture, finds himself seeing red everywhere. He wants to hit someone,  _anyone_ , but the closest thing to him is her. He crushes that urge underneath his heel.

“Don’t apologise,” he grits out. “Wasting your breath on things that you clearly don’t mean.”

“Well, I-” She wrings her hands, and unable to meet his eyes. “I don’t know what else to say.”

The line shuffles them closer and closer to the bread lady, and Tsukishima gestures towards the display with a sharp jerk of his head. “It’s almost your turn. Do your masters proud.”

He spins around before she can even react, and wades his way back to the stairwell. His classroom is on the second floor, but nothing feels better than climbing up and up. The further away from her, the better.

He ends up in the janitor’s room next to the rooftop.

Tsukishima scoffs as he thinks, if he threw a pencil off the roof and asked her to retrieve it for him, she would. Probably diving head first.

It’s not- he throws his head back and it lands with a thud against the concrete wall- it’s not what he had wanted. For him, for her, for them both. Because this isn’t a relationship, this is a cult that’s centered on the youth and generosity of one single donor. It’s getting harder each day to look at her and see her, instead of all those different things she’s holding in her arms, ready to deliver to her tormentors.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? That she doesn’t see them as her tormentors, that she’s always incapacitated by her endless sympathy for people that treat her poorly, and ask her of things.

They spin stories around her pretty little head. Someone’s grandmother fell ill last week, and maybe an uncle went bankrupt two days after. Yesterday, someone’s rabbit broke their foot. Who knows what it could’ve been this afternoon. Someone’s mother cheating on their father?

If dating someone has to be a battle of tragedies, Tsukishima wants no part of this. He can count his on all his protruding limbs, and just because he had a papercut yesterday and a bad text from someone, doesn’t mean he’s going to ask her to kiss his feet for an hour.

She bursts into the tiny room, beats of sweat rolling down her temples and her hands are balled into fists. She looks desperate, sorry, tired. Tsukishima feels very little from those expressions, and gestures for her to take a seat on the floor beside him. She crouches and does so.

“I know you’re mad, and I don’t blame you.” She reaches out a hand and places it gently on Tsukishima’s knee. “I’m sorry to disappoint you all the time.”

That isn’t the point. That has never been the point. Tsukishima has lost track of how many things life has disappointed him in, and those reasons are not relevant to why he wishes that she’d stop touching him.

“You’re really sweet,” he says. He thinks that she smiles. “And you’re very kind. You’re always, unchangingly kind. It’s what I liked about you so much. You were kind to someone like me, for no reason at all.”

“You deserve a lot more than you think you do, Tsukki.”

“You used to call me Kei.”

“You used to not mind if I called you Kei.” A sadness seeps into her voice, and Tsukishima has to look away at an empty pail to the right. “Will you tell me how you feel?”

He doesn’t answer for a long, long while. Neither of them move, waiting for the verdict for a question unasked.

“I feel like you don’t like being yourself.” Tsukishima takes a deep breath and lets it all go. “That you’re running away from how much you’re nothing, by listening to everyone else’s pain. And it’s not even real.  _It’s not even real_. They lie to you, they can have three different family members die in a car on three different occasions, and you still wouldn’t care.”

When Tsukishima turns to face her one more time, she looks absolutely terrified. There is a look of ill suppressed fear of someone’s Pandora’s box being cracked open inch by inch. He wants to pick the box up and break it over her head.

He leans forwards, and whispers her secrets back to her.

“You want to be needed. You want to be liked. You’re a beautiful person, but I think you need to start believing that soon, and stop trying to prove it to everyone else.”

He gets to his feet, his joints cracking underneath the weight, and he pulls open the unlocked door.

“I can’t date someone who’s dating everyone else. Sorry. I hope you wake up soon.”


	70. Tsukishima trying to get s/o away from flirty Tendou

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by im-not-crying-youre-crying:
>
>>   
> hai hai~ i requested this on another blogged and really liked it and wanted to see it in your writing style as well! could i please get a jealous tsukki trying to get his fem s/o away from tendou, who has a major crush on her, but she is completely oblivious and just finds tendou so funny and friendly until he tries to kiss her? maybe end it with some fluff? or even some jealous nsfw with tsukki? (tsukki is my ultimate fav, but tendou is my ultimate trash husband 😭😭 i love them both so much)  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I’m so sorry this took like, six years to finish, but I swear it’s here. I did it. Take my firstborn if need be. I chose to end it with fluff instead of nsfw, but I hope you enjoy it anyway! (Alternatively titled: nobody has any concept of boundaries.)_

“Hey.” Tsukishima flips close his textbook and turns his head in his palm to stare at his brother. “How do you kiss a girl?”

Akiteru almost chokes to death on a misplaced gulp of air, and slaps at the table several times. Tsukishima waits for him to finish dying and answer.

“Do- do you have a girlfriend?!”

Tsukishima rolls his eyes. “Who doesn’t by now?”

His brother flushes violently and looks a bit mutinous at the comment, but doesn’t comment. “I- I just can’t believe you’re finally asking me this question. Kei, I can’t get over how you’re growing so fast these days.”

“I have always been growing at the same speed. And who are you? Mom?”

“Do you want me to answer you or not?!”

Tsukishima sighs a world-weary sigh and nods his head. His eyes are bored, half-lidded, but the slight tapping of his index finger against his cheek betrays what would otherwise be a perfect disguise of indifference.

Akiteru looks mollified, and clears his throat. “Well. First, of course, you have to be sure of their consent. I think you should place your hands somewhere slightly above the hips-”

“That’s not what I meant,” Tsukishima interrupts, “I meant, how do  _you_  kiss. Your girlfriend. Boyfriend. Whatever.” He pauses, and peers at his brother. “You  _have_  had one, haven’t you?”

“Oh my God.” Akiteru’s face is now several degrees hotter and he feels like he would rather evaporate into the stratosphere than admit to being less experienced than his baby brother. “Yes, yes I’ve had one. I don’t have one at this very moment, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a reliable source of information!”

“Alright.” Tsukishima grins. “Go on, then.”

“I- Okay. Right. There’s the, uh, lips first. The key is to keep the right atmosphere- make it palpable, so it doesn’t just flop like some goodnight kiss from Mr. Teddy. Then- then you,  _ahem_ , you know. Go for it. Not too firm or anything, you don’t want to crush their teeth-”

“Do you move your tongue quickly, or slowly?”

“ _Oh my God._  U-uh, it’s usually… slowly…”

“Not ever in a rush, eh?”

“How can I rush something as intimate as a kiss?!”

Tsukishima eyes his brother, now steaming from the top of his head, and just shakes his head. “Guess you’ve never been in a closet in the middle of class, then.”

“Tsukishima Kei. Don’t let me hear of you skipping class to make out with your girlfriend! Education is important for your future-”

“Okay. Thanks for the info.” Tsukishima spins his head the other direction and tunes out his brother’s confuddled spluttering.

It wasn’t particularly informative, but there is definitely something that he’s missing that Akiteru’s got. Thoughtfully, he twirls his tongue slowly in his mouth in as many patterns he can think of.

* * *

He spies her haunting a small spot behind the volleyball gym the next day. A bit curious, he wonders if Coach Ukai would let him off lightly if he was a few minutes late to practice, and considers jogging up to meet her.

His curiousity, however, is quickly satisfied when a splash of red hair suddenly makes an unwelcome appearance behind a medium selection of bushes and runs over merrily to where she’s standing. It’s clearly who she’s waiting for in the beating sunlight.

A record-breaking wave of irrational yet completely justified irritation hits him like an upper cut.

He moves quietly a few steps to the side, behind a metal pillar, and observes. He resents that he’s too far to catch any of the dialogue.

 _Of all people_ , he fumes silently behind flashing glasses,  _it has to be that piece-of-shit blocker._

To be fair, he’s probably as much as a pain in the ass to Tendou Satori as Tendou Satori is to him, but she’s  _Tsukishima’s_  girlfriend, and he really, really hates how warmly she’s smiling at another guy.

It’s all tolerable for now. Except, they’re a polite distance from each other, and then suddenly, they’re not. Tsukishima’s a quick, intelligent jumper, but his knees are locked into stone pillars as he watches Tendou lean in, his fingers hovering ‘somewhere above her hips’, and press a kiss against her startled lips.

 _Damn right she’s startled_. If Tsukishima had a gun, he’d fire at least four rounds into the imbecile’s head, but he doesn’t and all movement from his neck down has temporarily suspended service.

She takes a surprised step back, anchoring her heel into the soft ground and pushes Tendou off her gently. He tips back into his original space, looking a bit sheepish, and she smiles embarrassedly at him. Tsukishima watches with hawk eyes, still mildly furious at the fact that she’s still capable of smiling, and she shakes her head whilst saying something to him that makes him shrug.

It’s not a proud shrug, it’s an apologetic, regretful shrug that good humour still runs through that keeps it light. Tendou grins wolfishly at her, most of the bravado gone, before nodding, and heading back the way he came. He throws up a calm wave over his shoulder, and Tsukishima’s girlfriend smiles fondly.

Tsukishima cannot say he is feeling quite so fond.

With considerable effort, he props his stiff joints back into their positions and marches over with ease that he definitely doesn’t feel.

She turns when she hears his footsteps, and his pace falters when something in her smile sets itself in place. There’s less searing brightness as it had been before, less of an innocent cluelessness that had tickled the edges of her cheeks. Instead it softens and melds into place, fitting her sweet countenance with a gentle heat that powers the way she opens herself up to welcome him.

His steps grow gradually slower and slower as he nears, and against his will, his knuckles loosen their grip around his fingers.

“Hello,” she greets him almost shyly. “I thought I’d be too late to catch you before you went in for practice.”

“Hello,” he echoes. The word falls almost alien from his lips, and his breathing mellows. She takes a step closer into his space and reaches out for his hand with her own; he laces his fingers through hers instinctively, feeling the cool pads underneath her nails nudge into the back of his hand. “I noticed you, so I hung back.”

Her smile flickers into an apologetic grimace.

“I’m sorry that happened.”

Tsukishima was mad, he really was. But somehow the emotion is slipping away from his mind like liquid, and each drop drips onto dry floor, lost and forgotten.

“I was pretty pissed off,” he says anyway, without heat. “It’s not the greatest thing to see after school.”

She nods, slightly ashamed. “I got a message from Tendou, so I thought why not kill two birds with one stone, and see what he wanted whilst I waited for you to finish changing.” She clears her throat awkwardly. “It was just a misunderstanding. I let him know I didn’t see him that way, and that I wasn’t available.”

“So he came to confess,” Tsukishima mutters. “Well, at least we know now that you’re popular when I’m otherwise occupied.”

“It’s your face. It scares them away when you’re around.”

He scowls at her, and she laughs in return. “We’re still good friends. He was a good sport, and I was flattered.” She looks at him expectantly from underneath her fringe. “I hope you don’t mind that too much.”

Since this is his only chance, Tsukishima takes advantage of it and heaves the heaviest sigh he can manage.

“He wouldn’t exactly be  _my_  choice of friend, but yeah. I don’t mind. You’ve the right to be friends with whoever you want to be.”

“You don’t like him because he reminds you too much of yourself.” She grins.

Tsukishima shoots her a look that questions her sanity. “Definitely not. We’re polar opposites, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“But you’re both so- it’s the same type of intensity, you know? But in different ways. You’re both slightly unhinged.”

“What even.” Tsukishima tugs his hand out from her grip and crosses it over his chest. “Are you trying to set me up with him?”

She shrugs, but her shoulders are shaking with laughter. “I can always call him back, you know.”

“He’s not kissing me,” Tsukishima warns.

“It really wasn’t much, Kei.” Her soothing voice is back, and Tsukishima lets his arms slowly relax back to his sides. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll give you one. That way we’re all kissed by the end of the day.”

For the longest time, Tsukishima had completely forgotten the purpose for his actively seeking her out after their final period. He’d been the one to suggest meeting up, after all, but the business with Tendou had completely pushed anything rational out of his mind.

Now, it all comes back to him. His slightly random purpose, and his conversation the night before with Akiteru.

“Alright,” he says. “Let’s bet on it.”

She rolls her eyes ever so slightly, but she’s smiling. “Terms.”

“Whoever blushes first, loses. You win, I’ll skip practice and I’ll treat you to the waffle ice-cream set. If I win, you take a picture of us kissing, and you text Satori that I’m the better kisser.”

“Kei, you really are unbelievably petty over the most insignificant things, aren’t you?”

“Humour me,” he suggests, with a face as blank as the new moon.

“What a big baby,” she laughs. “You’re on.”

Tsukishima tugs her by the waist, without warning, and they crash into each other chests first. A gasp of air is forced out from her lungs and it leaves her slightly winded, and that’s when Tsukishima swoops in with his upper hand.

He starts it off, as Akiteru advised, with the utmost patience. It’s a slow brush of lips, and he shifts them ever so softly against each other and his tongue wets the space between them with firm, slick brushes. Her face remains cool to the touch, and he presses closer. They can no longer feel their own lips upon each other’s, only the diagonal warm that heats the both of them from their faces downwards. Tsukishima taps the tip of his tongue briefly along the seam of her mouth, asking for permission, and when she weakens, he drags his hands up to cup the sides of her face as he slides his tongue against hers. Searing, slow strokes, as he had pointlessly practiced last night, in sudden circles and twisting patterns, he pushes against her own tongue, leading her heartbeat in a merry dance around the lack of space that’s left between them both. He brushes his fingers lightly against the arch of her cheekbones, before drawing them to the curve of her ear. She whimpers against him, a delicious sound that he dives into and presses it back into her mouth with a harsh lick and a sudden suck.

He can feel her begin to shiver against his frame, and he lets one of his hands fall against her curvature to rest gently on the small dip behind her back.

Tsukishima presses her into him one last time, and nips her bottom lip with enough pressure that it leaves it a bubbling red. He pulls back, and doesn’t bother hiding his satisfied and equally lascivious smirk at her red face, dazed and trying her best to focus on his eyes again.

He dips her slightly to the left, and soothes her bruised lips with a soft finale.

“You blushed,” he finally manages after two attempts to clear his throat from the hoarseness. “I believe I’m still quite bloodless. I win.”

Her following laugh is exasperated, and impossibly fond. She can barely stand up to her full height anymore, but Tsukishima doesn’t mind propping her up against his side.

“I can’t believe you practiced that,” she remarks after catching her breath. “You can’t have come up with that on the spot.”

“I win,” Tsukishima repeats, slightly ruffled at being caught out. “Let’s take a picture, and you’re sending that message.”

“To prove to a man I rejected that my boyfriend is a petty guy.” She nods. “Got it.”

He makes sure that she’s tapping the message into her chat before he finally high tails it into the gym.

When Coach Ukai, and possibly the rest of the team, stare at his definitely debauched volleyball outfit, they decide that it’s safer for everyone’s imagination to not ask at all.

Coach Takeda, however, sums up enough courage to tap him on the shoulder before he gets into position.

“Tsukishima,” he asks in his kindly tone, “I hope nothing was the matter. You’re half an hour late to practice.”

“I’m sorry,” Tsukishima answers, “I caught my girlfriend kissing another guy.” He can’t help but grin ever so slightly when Takeda falls back, shocked. “There’s nothing to worry about. It turned to be quite entertaining.”

* * *

Minutes before he falls asleep that night, Tsukishima blinks at the sudden screenshot he receives from her at two in the morning.

It’s a picture of Tendou, sticking out his tongue with a cherry stem tied up in three separate knots.

 _I’d like to see him defend his title._  His answer reads.  _Three-way challenge. You in?_


	71. Oikawa's a butler, and his s/o's a maid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by monkey-d-rima:
>
>>   
> domo~ scenario with oikawa where seijo is doing their cultural festival and their class is doing a maid x butlers cafe where he's a butler (nosebleed) and his girlfriend is a maid?? plz and thank you!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: This is a small style experiment. I haven’t had the energy to do these in ages, so I’m pretty excited. It might not be the super thrilling format that you guys are used to, but I hope you enjoy the ambiance anyway. Thank you for your patience!_

_Welcome to Seijou’s cultural festival._

* * *

_[butler.]_

Curtains drape across the half-opened windows, and the afternoon breeze is a carefully picked delicacy. The teacher’s lounge has been taken over by them, and an arrangement of sofas and loveseats dot the room in pockets of comfort.

If one listens closely, through the open cracks by the windowsill echo the excited cries of festival goers down below. However, the room is abuzz, the pattering of heels fluttering here and there, shifting tables against velvet and chairs along the lines of the floor. 

He is the last to step out from behind the curtains.  _Oikawa Tooru_ , is pinned to the lapel of his tailored jacket, and when somebody adjusts the angle of a lamp, it lights up the room in momentary magnificence.

Oikawa doesn’t look like a king. On his face, the usual on-court fierceness is gone, and his shoulder slope downwards with ease. They slide up and down with each easy breath he takes, the sweet cherry blossom scent curling itself around the soft explosion of a cool humidifier.

Oikawa tugs one more time at his collar, fixing his bow-tie so that it lies centre underneath his crown, and checks his cuff links. They’re neatly hidden underneath the tuxedo jacket that finishes at his wrists, and his white gloves stretch along the back of his palm in a second skin. His shoes shine as he flexes his feet against the dimming sunlight, and carefully, he pulls at a single curl behind his ear so it wraps around his nape.

His hair, if carefully maintained throughout the day, will remain its uncommonly soft demeanour. It’s tousled, with a little assistance, and it frames his face with a kindness brought out from the unknown depths of his soul. Only appearing once every year, Oikawa reserves his servitude for the annual cultural festival.

The murmuring from outside the sliding doors is growing in volume, and someone bumps against the doorframe as the crowd begins to swarm further and further in. Magically, the clock continues to tick at its measured pace.

He takes his place, as do all his classmates. Chins up, arms straight and a loving smile at the ready, they pit their weight onto their battle stations with a bow to their waist.

Five seconds, their class representative gestures with his fingers, and they all nod.

He wonders if he’ll see her this afternoon. He certainly hopes that she’ll pop by before the main event, and he’ll just have enough time to slip to her table and take his place as her server. It’d be a treat if she were alone, or perhaps with several female friends, and without a doubt Oikawa knows he will put on a performance of a lifetime.

He lets his smile linger, something personal at the edges, as the seconds pass.

And, the doors open.

 

 

_[maid.]_

The sounds of all ages pour through the poorly insulated windows. The corridor is not exempt from the exceptional amount of noise. She, quickly, wishes that her class had been granted as advantageous an area as the butler café.

It means that they must prove themselves. She looks around her, fingertips tapping at the inside of her palm in apprehension.

She’s never had to serve anyone before, and she’s unfamiliar with the sensation of oncoming scrutiny. It would be lovely if they were good, if they were at ease.

Her friends, her classmates all shoot her equally reassuring grins, some slightly more embarrassed than others, and gratefulness wells up in the way her eyes crease into a smile. It’s as bright as she can manage, to match the afternoon shine from outside.

The tables are circular, with sturdy legs that prop them up with more certainty than the organizers themselves. The tablecloth is a tapered white, velvet and merciful to the touch. Fingers of all sorts run over the soft, giving fabric for comfort, and one tell-tale corner, crumpled, has anxiousness pressed into the creases.

Nobody dares to consider that they are greener than the butler class. To them, it is no longer important. The footsteps outside gets louder, shrill voices are mixed with a smattering of bass lines, until the cacophony of sounds outside resemble a male orchestra, dipping up and low with enthusiasm.

It makes her arms steady, and her breathing regular. She checks her attire before her hair in the mirror sat innocuously in the left corner.

The fabric sits smugly against her skin, stroking it with utmost gentleness each time she shifts position. She reaches up to make sure that the light-weight collar doesn’t scratch against her neck, and with her gloved fingers she tugs down the hem. It flares out shortly past her upper thighs, and the elegance finds its way into her posture. The mesh pantyhose stretches as it should, and her heels thump softly against the temporary carpet.

Glancing around the room one final time, everyone, although nervous, seems undeniably proud of their hand-crafted nirvana. Cushions decorate any surfaces that would be uncomfortable, and a unassuming glass of flowers sit at the centre of each table.

Their class president stands by the closed doors with a set of menus in arm. Her smile is blinding, affectionate, and a collective rumble of confidence sweeps through the room.

She reaches up to her hair, making sure her crimson ribbon is exactly where she left it.

The president nods, a demonstrative act of faith, and they ready themselves.

In one swift motion, the door is open.

 

 

_[cafe.]_

It’s a one-hour special, cultural festival exclusive and an infamous event that draws in the teeming crowd into the narrow slips of corridors that the school can offer.

The third floor, is packed to bursting.

Stands reach behind into their stocks and proffer their best goods, and merchandise begins to appear in splotches across the sudden surge of stores that have appeared from thin air. One stand, in its entirety, offers Oikawa Tooru goods, pictures and fans galore.

Before she heads in, she sneaks a break to purchase a limited-edition photobook of him. The stand owner, a friend from three classes away, grins at her knowingly and offers it to her at half price.

She takes it, appreciative, and promises exclusive chances for her to snap photos of Oikawa when she can manage.

The last to enter through the back door, she shuts it behind her as quietly as possible. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help her case very much.

All eyes are glued onto the glossy book in her hands, with varying degrees of amusement and anticipation.

Oikawa Tooru himself stands with his hands placed politely behind his back with a wicked beam on his face. He has been waiting for her, and his face parts in a struggle between excited and exasperation.

“I bought one,” she laughs at him. “I thought your wall could do with some more decoration.”

It didn’t. Oikawa’s bedroom wall, usually plastered with an assortment of volleyball posters and post-it notes, would, each year, be covered by his own pictures. Although he is fully aware of his own beauty, he is unsure if he wants to stare at it each morning he wakes up.

It’s a team effort, as many people attempt to sneak her as many odd pictures of himself as possible on this fateful day.

“Were you nervous today?” He attempts instead. The conversation is diverted with grace, and all eagerness is left behind for later, when it is appropriate.

The people in the room begin to shuffle again, preparing for their second opening. There is only a sliver of opportunity for small talk, and boys and girls alike dodge each other in attempts to fix as many aspects of the café as possible. There are barely any eyes that linger on each other. There simply isn’t the time.

Oikawa finds that he can’t help the soft smile that teases his lips as he watches her bustle about. He helps, of course, but action is less useful when one is already calm.

In five minutes, they all take their places, and accordingly, deep breaths.

The racket outside is incomparable to earlier. It’s an earth-shaking din, and they do their best to rest their nerves.

The tables are ready, the chairs are straight. The lighting shifts as the sun roams across its path across the sky, and the curtains filter in only ambiance. Girls pull at their skirts, and the boys tug at their shirts.

Ten seconds; the collaboration tenses; they hold their breath for the most anticipated event of the year.

A crack, and then a slot, and the crowd is let in, in a swooping wave.


	72. "I could have spent all this time practicing instead of wasting it by being with you"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> angsty scenario with oikawa and his fem s/o with the prompt “i could have spent all this time practicing instead of wasting it by being with you.” ending with fluff ? or like a happy ending  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I’m not sure if this turned out a happy ending or not, but I tried to make it as close to a hopeful sort of ending as I could. Sorry for the wait, and I hope you like it._

How was one supposed to feel, after hearing something like that?

Nobody had ever prepared you for this; not a single script in a thousand novels that drifted through time or slices of everyday lives in a tiny apartment could pull out the excruciating sense of deflation in places where it shouldn’t be deflating at all. Your parents, no matter how unhappy, had never bothered to share with you the details of ‘commitment’. ‘Romance’ isn’t a syllabus they provide at school. Vicarious learning can only be poor imitation when poets write of wilted roses, lost sunsets and the chill winter breeze.

There’s a meter-long needle, thin as wire, its tip worthy of Achilles, that nudges through the small puncture through your chest. Each breath nudges it out of place, and re-lodges itself somewhere deeper.

Oikawa’s face is stoic, the firm lines across his brows forced together in an expression unfamiliar with pity and second chances.

It still takes you too long to ask the right question; his fighting face directed point blank at your eyes, and your chest begins to writhe, incapable of inuring itself to a suffering unknown.

You ask a stupid question. You know it’s stupid from how Oikawa’s mouth twists, a nonverbal spit at your feet.

“How am I supposed to feel when you say that?” 

You regret it before you even ask it, but you think you’d regret it more if you wrote it down instead and burned it later.

He’s holding the only volleyball in the court, and he bounces it off the floor once, before catching it again. It’s timed with a click of his tongue. You’re dismissed in percussion.

“I don’t care,” he whines, but it’s low and brusque, and the volume reflects off the walls back onto itself. “You were the one who followed me all the way here-”

“ _Followed?_ ” Your right hand twitches in indignation against your side. “You- it’s been a week. We’re in the  _same school_.”

“And that gives you some kind of pass?” He’s starting to get angry, and the fuel builds off his excess frustration. It’s blindingly infuriating to him that you can’t understand his perspective, no matter how obviously you were your own person. It didn’t feel like it, sometimes. “You know what volleyball is to me. You don’t know your place.”

Was this what dating was supposed to feel like? They never taught him either.

You don’t bother to pull out your phone to show him his quick, yet hopeful response to your invitation to spend time together this afternoon. Never before had a simple ‘yes’ lifted your spirits with so little effort.

It seemed that nobody had the talent that Oikawa had at switching your emotions like a vending machine with a minimum amount of care.

It was power given to the wrong man, it seems. The learning curve remains as harshly steep as ever, but your mind begins to grasp the very thing that Oikawa had demanded you understand.

Choosing to keep your lips sealed along with what remains of your dignity that has been stripped from you like bark by the person you hold closest to your heart, you nod, neutrally, and walk out of the empty gymnasium. The door closes shut smoothly behind you with a small push.

By the time you reach the halfway point between your path home, the wrestling in your chest has been soothed into a dull throb here and there.

You still haven’t the slightest idea what its name could be.

* * *

“Take the moral high ground,” he begs a few days later, “you’ve always been the better person. You know that.”

Four days of radio silence has, frankly, meant nothing to you, a veteran of absent lovers. It was a tick off the calendar, a mere dent in the framework. Oikawa has tormented you with longer cold shoulders than a succession of days that was worth only a volleyball practice.

The thought brings an ironic smile to your face. Has he identified something that has made him cave in so soon?

Oikawa mirrors your smile with a watery one of his own. He misunderstands it for pity.

“I shouldn’t have said that.” He looks up- he’s on his knees- at you. “I shouldn’t have said that, right?”

You hold in your laughter. “You’re asking me? I’m not the one apologizing.”

The notion seems to come to him like a fresh splash of water. You watch as it dawns on his posture, and he folds further into himself in a mimicry of humility.

Perhaps you’re being unfair. Perhaps he really is sorry, as he always is after several days, but you can’t tell behind your blue-glossed gaze.

Oikawa switches his tactic from begging for forgiveness, to offering apologies regardless of the outcome. It is so supremely unlike him that it makes you twitch uncomfortably in your jacket.

“Do you-” The words clog up in your throat for no good reason fathomable, and you clear it, irritated at how weak it suddenly paints you. “Do you know why? Tooru, can you tell me why? Why are you on your knees? What do you want from me that you haven’t been given before?”

His genius brain probes into your words like an alien exploration of human decency. You’ve loved him once for something, that is clear, but Oikawa has never quite grasped onto what, precisely, that is. Just as how he has barely grasped onto who you are, either. You’ve seen through that after several interactions; you’re a collection of favourable traits slotted neatly into a single body that’s convenient for transportation.

“Am I,” he tries, “…disappointing?”

You suppress the urge to applaud him. For someone fixated on the word with manic dependency, Oikawa Tooru seems to have been so busy trying to avoid being one to realize that capability was one he was born with, and exercises it off-court with impressive regularity.

You’re beginning to learn to appreciate the pillar of support that is Iwaizumi Hajime.

“You can only disappoint someone who has high expectations of you, do you know that?”

This he understands. He hears it from his coach on a daily basis. You wish you didn’t have to borrow the influence of another person to reach into Tooru’s narrow understanding of his loved ones.

“I’m an asshole,” he attempts again, “I’m sorry that I said that to you.”

“You meant it, Tooru. That was the worst. Nobody has talked to me with that much disrespect in my life.”

His mouth falls open and then closes itself again with nothing to offer. This isn’t the first argument where he’s wordless, and it won’t be the last.

You’ve almost built a house for yourself on the chilly peaks of the moral high ground. Oikawa remains comfortable at the bottom of the valley, warm and cozy against the summer salt winds.

He gets to his feet, and takes several steps more towards you until his chest almost grazes your nose. You can feel the warmth of his frantically beating heart underneath the thin uniform shirt, and his height draws a shadow for you to take refuge under. His face blocks out the glare of the sun behind his head.

“You can’t forgive me all the time,” he mumbles inelegantly above your crown. “I know that. I know that I’m just looking to make you less angry each time, and I do it all again.”

“Why do you think I’m with you?”

He sighs, and the force takes his body with it. It’s not an airy suspiration. The breath sinks him, and his back bends until his chin touches your head.

“I’ve no clue,” he confesses. “Maybe it’d be easier if I knew what to exaggerate.”

“You don’t need to exaggerate anything. But I want you to know- even if I stop forgiving you a year later- that you can’t bring your emotions into everything. You can’t talk to people like that, Tooru. We’re not beneath you, we’re not here for you to vent out your anger.”

You rest both hands against his chest and push yourself out to meet his eyes. They’re watery, with genuine tears instead of the crocodile fluids that seem to trickle out of his body with pinpoint precision when summoned.

“I would never expect you to forgive me in an afternoon if I called you a waste of space. You need to stop expecting that from me, too.”

You remind yourself of your limits each afternoon he burns your nerves into tatters. Your self-confidence waxes and wanes like a distant planet depending on Oikawa’s affectation that day, and his text messages asking to see your smile grip onto you and don’t let go until you give in.

The poison is sour in your mouth, and you desperately try and cling onto what remains of a healthy relationship before it all withers into toxin.

“I understand.” Oikawa bends low to rest at your eyelevel. “I’m sorry, I really am. I want you to believe me.”

The ineffable pain returns in full force.

“I believe you each time,” you tell him softly. “That’s what makes it so terrible the next time.”

When he leans in to press a chaste kiss against your cheek, you know without even feeling that your hackles are melting to his seasonal sincerity. And, you forgive him, because you’re both in love, and that’s all you’re capable of doing.

A clock ticks behind the both of you at different rhythms, and your intertwined fingers drag against each other, spending whatever fire remains in the thin space between two figures to drag the inexorable drift of time further away from a final destination.


	73. Kuroo's ex gets in a car crash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Original character death
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> can i have a kuroo x reader angst?? like, maybe kuroo has feelings for his ex and reader gets in a car accident or something when she finds out. it can end up either way (i'm more of am angst person but us love two endings ❤️) with a happy or sad ending. much love  
> 

The taxi engine hummed louder than the radio, rasping through the stock speakers, but your driver caught the dim beat nonetheless, tapping his fingers in a rhythmic homage to Sam Smith as he discussed the imminent bad weather into his Bluetooth receiver. The louder he spoke, the angrier he got, and the angrier he got, the faster the car went. Sam Smith was doing his best to mitigate the damage, but biological propensity towards undue road rage seemed to be a static in the universe no matter how softly the lyrics dissolved into the stench of leather and lavender air freshener.

Your phone buzzed against your thigh when the song hit its climax, and you gave it a cursory glance. It felt like a nudge, and nudges could be ignored. The screen was well hidden underneath your thick coat, safely away from impending reality, so you chose to turn your head back to face the blurry stream of winter trees along the pavement.

Rather than in a dark box travelling at ungodly speeds, you saw yourself- felt yourself, your two feet, planted firmly on the bumpy surface of an escalator step. Riding up, doing a U-turn, and riding it back down again. The large lobby was silent, and the security guard seemed to be fixated on what non-danger was outside. A vast glass window served as the wall for the looming ground floor, and you gazed outside all the while, seeing nothing.

Had you wanted to go up? Or go down? Which was the destination, and which was the detour; would each slow step back towards the escalator entrance finally snatch at a side of your coat and drag you in with it?

What were you even building with your footsteps?

You  _could_  work on yourself. You could take all this and become a better person. You could possibly write a paper, or a heartfelt blogpost on an Agony Aunt wordpress account about what it meant to love and lose.

Or, you could draw line-less circles and count your breaths. In, out, in out, until your feet became numb enough that you’d begin to forget what direction you had been heading towards in the first place. Let it pass, so to speak.

You were letting it pass. Although the vibrant taxi driver appeared to be moving his client towards something with incredible determination, you attempted to recall where you’d asked to be delivered.

A second buzz came. If it had a voice, it’d sound more insistent. You turned the coat over in your arms once for an extra layer, and laid it on top of the phone. A soft press for good measure, and the buzzing stopped, and you relaxed. Were you late for something? It was difficult to remember when the snow began to fall outside.

Someone was shouting even louder than before. There’s always someone shouting, you’ve come to notice. About something or another. If it wasn’t about how their boss had cheated them out of a raise, or someone’s girlfriend made out with another guy in a bar they had sworn they wouldn’t be at the night before.

But when there wasn’t shouting, there was silence. Silence in the late night, early morning, silence in the bathroom when you were imagining that it’s rain pouring through your sopping locks, silence when two people sat across each other in front of the darkened television with nothing they were willing to say.

Silence when you’re ignoring calls, and silence when nobody picks up.

Silence when ‘I love you’ wasn’t the message you wanted to convey, and ‘I’m sorry’ wasn’t something you allowed yourself to say. All those wrong choices scraped together a wall that stemmed the tide of regrettable expressions that all missed the mark. If it were you, how would you possibly express that you’re in love with someone, but you’re also in love with someone a little more? Was it more? Would you need ‘more’ to motivate your self-extraction of guilt?

‘I love you’ was still something you wanted to express. You wanted to fill the silence with an emotion that had soured; transformed into something that would nourish another, but mar you.

It was also the truth. An absolute truth that the radio danced around in snowy afternoons, the burner for taxi drivers to risk their necks and carry as many clients as they could in a day.

Sometimes the risk doesn’t pay off.

You walked off the escalator. There was a touch of vertigo to your movements, but the security guard’s gaze was steady, and you followed his Ariadne’s thread back into your office where the last stroke of paint fell onto the picture. You loved him before he told you, and you loved him still after he had told you.

He had the liberty of crying a lot more than you could, with your broken breaths and widened eyes trying to dry out your tear ducts with pumps of corporate air conditioning. What an odd affair! If someone had wrote it all down and switched the nouns around, it could easily have been a confession, with you as the recipient.

It was still a confession of some sort. Kuroo’s confession, was too much love. It sloshed around his irises, and spilled over his crow’s feet. Buckets of it, seeped into mismanaged cracks and the infrastructure until it was too late, and it all had to be shut down for maintenance. You felt it creeping towards you with outstretched fingers as he’d apologized, as he’d confessed his too-much-love, in all the wrong places.

You’d walked out of it with more love than you ever wanted; half of your heart cradled in rigid knuckles and the stains dripping all over your dry-cleaned pants. It simply wouldn’t stop bleeding all over the place, the impertinent thing.

Your suffering was your own crime. Kuroo hadn’t asked for a single hint of affection for you, no matter how much his gestures seemed to be begging for something. Choices laid themselves prostrate in front at your discretion, and you had picked with chilly, cracked fingers to get into a taxi, aimless, humming along to a tuneless version of ‘Palace’ in your head.

You could have said no.

You could have been angry. Perhaps he would have preferred that.

Maybe, if you could take a damned hint, that was what he’d been pleading you for. He didn’t want your love. He had his own, for you, for her, and it would still have remained absolutely none of your business whether you had proffered the same back or had preferred to throw your mug at his face.

This time, there really was silence. Not the kind of silence that swam around your head and made you go through your tea collection for the fifth time in a row, but the silence that came after a scream. The driver had stopped, his phone cracked, and the radio had long fallen still. The snow continued to fall outside, around you, and the contrasting warmth made closing your eyes the only worthwhile movement you wanted to make.

* * *

Unlucky was what it was.

Or rather, it was more unkind than unlucky. In the darkness, in the nothingness that was whatever this was, (inevitability?), you sort of missed your driver screeching about poorly parked Toyotas blocking his street back at home. You hoped that he’d made it out alright, and perhaps he’d be out of the ICU in time for visitation hours in case his son took the night shift off after hearing the news.

You’d always thought too much, even when you had been explicitly told to shut the gears up in your head. An audible thinker must have been an annoyance for anyone unfortunate enough to be in the near vicinity. Kuroo liked to rub your head or pinch your cheeks, just for your little eyes to stop flickering here and there for more whimsical thoughts.

You would miss him. If there was anyone out there, godly or otherwise, you hoped that they would give him the love he deserved.

He would probably be crying. Ragged, tearing sobs from a heart too soft for its large body. You prayed and prayed, that his ex-girlfriend would learn to hold him closer than you had. Enough to wrap him around in layers of hand-knitted affection, and cover his eyes with its silk.

There wasn’t much time, and there wasn’t much left of you. The brightness beyond your eyelids seemed to press heavier against your chest, heavier and heavier until it all blended into a dyed burgundy background. Your mind began to blur, the static of an unplugged cable.

Black was creeping in past the weakening outline of colour, and just before the metronome stilled for the  _tacet_ , you felt the soft warmth of a hand press against your cheek. And it felt very much like love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > ANONYMOUS / i didn’t understand the kuroo liking his ex imagine, can you please explain?
> 
> Yeah, sorry it was hard to understand. I’d, hmm, imagine it as a scene, or as one of those moments in life where you’d remember it like a movie, where nothing really felt real.
> 
> So you’re at work, you’ve had a feeling things aren’t the same anymore these past few days, even at home. Kuroo doesn’t have as much to say to you, and when he does, it’s all mixed messages.
> 
> It’s first snow. He comes to find you at your office, and confesses- breaks down- that he’s fallen in love with his ex. He doesn’t say the rest, but it’s obvious to both of you that you still love each other. Just that he has someone else he loves too.
> 
> It hurts. You’re not someone who can share, and he doesn’t expect you to. He asks to break up, because he feels guilty. You walk out, in a trance, and call a taxi to somewhere you can’t remember. Did you have a meeting? Or lunch?
> 
> It’s snowing harder, and your taxi driver gets angrier and angrier because shitty drivers are slinking out. He drives faster, because he doesn’t want to get stuck in traffic, and before you can even think about reality again (away from your bleak mindscape) your driver gets nicked by another car, and you slam into concrete.
> 
> You’re drifting in and out of conscious at the hospital, and you’re almost at the end. With your last moments, you choose to stay true to your love- that it’s there no matter who Kuroo ends up with, and pray that he lives better after you.
> 
> A warm, familiar hand brushes against your cheek before it all fades.


	74. Oikawa's s/o practices her confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> shy little fem s/o that's friends with oikawa and has a crush on him and he catches her practicing her confession to him one day after school  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Oikawa wants to be cool, but he cannot hide the soft._

“Hi. Hi. Hi!  _Hi._ ”

Your voice accidentally skids up several notes, and you quickly clear your throat, a heat beginning to rise from the base of your neck.

“O-Oikawa…,” you attempt again, and all sound somehow dies in the back of your throat when you reach ‘-wa’.

Okay, scratch the ‘rising heat’, you might as well bake in your own embarrassment. A soft and toasty roast to your cheeks, lots of fat to make it tender. You’re not even sure if you really managed to finish sounding the whole word.

Perhaps saying his name isn’t the best way to begin.  _‘Oikawa’_  sounds so incredibly foreign on your lips, your shaking, roughly bitten lips both moist from too much gnawing and flaky from adrenaline. You can’t recall the feeling of simply saying his name on a regular basis no matter how much you try. How did you ever get through those afternoons together, just talking about nothing and anything? You must’ve had to say his name at least two dozen times within the same hour, and look at you now- barely capable of bringing yourself to voice the same syllables. Just right when you needed to the most.

Clapping your palms against your cheeks and feeling them almost cook from the heat, you take a deep, shuddering breath. Your calves might even be trembling, but you can’t be sure. Your hands are too busy shaking for you to feel anything below the waist.

Alright. Let’s try this again. 

“I’ve… uhm, I’ve got something to say. Say? Say. Tell you?”

Why does everything sound like a question? You frown down at your elbows. Indeed, Oikawa, I have called you here to ask whether you’re sure or not that I’ve got something to say.

“What on  _earth_  am I doing,” you groan. What were you even thinking, leaving your stationery set at home? Your perfectly functioning back-up plan? Clearly, you’ve lost it to idiocy.

As you had anticipated, only distant cheers of children in the next park over greet your rhetorical question. You’d initially thought that Oikawa might be less likely to reject you if you’d asked in person, but considering how you feel like you might just burst into tears and die before you ever made it that far, the handwritten letter begins to look like a better and wiser prospect.

But you know he gets tons of those every day. He’d almost completely forgone using his own locker and began to squeeze his shoes on top of Iwaizumi’s simply because there were so many folded notes and scented letters crammed into his shoe locker. He’d even passed one to you for absolutely no reason at all. ‘A souvenir’, he had suggested. It was a scented lilac envelope, and you had slipped it back into his locker as soon as he wasn’t looking.

You lay your forehead on your desk and sigh. It comes easily, straight from the gut; an anthem of prolonged agony.

He probably has lots of confessions too. In the corridors, on the rooftop, ambushed in the bathroom, some right as his desk. Someone once sang him a song once underneath his bedroom window. It may or may not have been a dare, but Oikawa had been roasted for an entire week by his team afterwards, and that poor girl never had a chance.

“At least she was brave enough to sing!” You half-bellow out of exasperation, several pages of your notebook rustling in surprise.  Immediately, you clamp your hand over your mouth and hoped that nobody had heard that. Almost everything relies on the lightning prayer you shot at the heavens for your anonymity- everybody should’ve gone home by now, or at least outside with their extracurricular clubs, right? If there is a God, please, let it be so.

The humongous, round clock that sits comfortably above the teacher’s desk warns you that you’ve roughly half an hour left until Oikawa finishes volleyball practice for the day. Time is ticking with or without your awareness, and you haven’t even come up with a plan for how to take him to once side. You know you’d rather serenade him in his kitchen with his dad conducting than confess in front of his team, but you’re still stuck on step one. It’d taken you the whole morning to even gather up the guts to plan this thing without simply bursting into indigo flames of regret and humiliation.

Your mother always said simple is best. You could send him a text, maybe?

Good gosh, he’ll probably think you need help clearing the blackboard.

Ah… you feel a single word away from crying, but you wager your embarrassment might just turn your tears into a salty steam. Yes, let’s welcome Oikawa into a man-made sauna for something he’d probably laugh at.

“You’re being unfair,” you reprimand yourself aloud for even thinking it. “Oikawa’s not that sort of person. He wouldn’t laugh at his friends’ feelings.” You more than knew that- you believed that. Your soft-hearted, whiny friend wouldn’t do that to you, and that, possibly, makes you even more nervous. The fact that he’d take you seriously, and the fact that things wouldn’t be the same afterwards.

Yet, weren’t you counting on that?

You sit up straight and clear your throat again. “I-I… I think I- no, I don’t think, I know…” Your voice is marginally louder than before, which had been pretty much a toneless exhale, and that gives you a smidgen more courage. “I-I- oh my gosh- I like you. I said it! Is that too, uhm, direct? I like you? I kind of like you? What’s wrong with me?”

It almost sounds like you’ve burst into song. Should you write a script and read it out loud?

“I know you get these a lot, and I hope I’m not, uhm, not making you uncomfortable?”

Nope. Why would you remind him of other girls? If he wasn’t uncomfortable before, he most certainly would be after.

“I have a crush on you. Uhm, maybe a bit more than a crush. I sound kinda obsessed, don’t I?”

Less stalker-ish would be good.

“Again. Okay, so, I like you. Like, like-like you. I’m not twelve, I promise.”

Very eloquent. You really should’ve written the letter instead.

“I’ve… I’ve, uhm, had feelings for you for a while.” Okay, better. Saner. “I’m… not sure what I’m asking, but I, uhm, you don’t have to say anything yet. You can think about it? Unless you don’t have to think about it and this is awkward for you and you kind of want to run away but you don’t want to hurt my feelings? ‘Cus, uhm, it’s okay to run away. I’m only talking to myself and I already want to run away.”

“Shame. The start wasn’t so bad.”

“It improved, at least. Why does everything I say end up really weird? Maybe I should send an emoji. Would that be really creepy? Just a random bear holding a heart. Lord, what would that even mean?”

Oikawa shrugs. “Dunno. Probably a ‘thanks’ for borrowing my notes?”

“Why? What’s wrong with my own?”

There’s a short moment of stillness. Down the corridor someone sneezes. A planet in the distance explodes.

If you close your eyes, maybe everything will go away. You’ll wake up in your bed, a bit late for breakfast but it’s okay, everything’s okay, your mom is downstairs, and all will be normal.

“Mind if I take a seat?”

Oikawa has never actually asked permission to sit down in his life, and he had no intentions of starting now. He drags the chair from the desk in front of yours without waiting for an answer and swings a leg over it, resting his forearms over the backrest with as much ease as a giant cat.

Your eyes are still peacefully closed, but if they were open, hypothetically, you would be able to see him looking as if he’d all the right to be looming over you with not a hair out of place.

“I can help you rehearse, if you want. I’ll write off all the bad ones and you’ll get to say the one we settle on at the end. I’ll pretend it’s the first time I hear it.’

He’s definitely examining his fingernails. It’s in his voice.

“You’re… early,” you breathe. The tail end of your message falls away from your voice, lost in the winds forever. Oikawa snatches it out of the air blithely.

“Coach had to go to a qualifiers meeting.” He twists around to check the ugly clock. “We’re only fifteen minutes early. Did you need the extra time?”

Another five years would be great, your mind supplies through the emptiness, but none of it makes to fruition. Your knuckles clench whiter around themselves as your face grows progressively warmer. Oikawa reaches out a hand- you hear him smirk as he does- and brushes his fingers against your scarlet cheeks. You’re helpless to shiver against their sudden coolness, prompting him to trace them down your chin slowly, swirling past your racing pulse.

“I could cook an egg on you right now. C’mon, open your eyes so I can really take a look at how embarrassed you are.”

Vaguely dead inside, you do as you’re told. Hazel eyes push forwards to peer into yours a mere inch away, and you blink as slowly as possible to maximize the time where you can’t see him.

At least, it works until those large brown orbs begin to tremble slightly, and you can’t help but deviate from your plan and glance down quickly at his lips.

“They’re… they’re a bit wobbly,” you point out.

Oikawa blinks, confused. “What’s wobbly?”

“Your lips.” You inhale with your mouth and breathe out through your nose, no longer aware of how not sensible it is to point out someone’s lips. “They- well, uhm, are you… okay?”

When he leans back and smacks his lips together, the expression is gone. It looked suspiciously like he had been overwhelmed by some sort of emotion, but you would never say that to his face.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Much better than you, at least.” His mouth stretches into an amused grin, and your face reddens several shades. You rub at it with the edge of your sleeve to soothe the heat away as much as possible. “Red’s a good look on you.”

You huff at his jibe, and your voice strengthens from its previous whisper. “Don’t be mean.”

“You should see it for yourself. I’m not even joking.” So he says, but the edge to Oikawa’s eyes soften ever so slightly, and his fingers relax from their tight grip around his chair. “But you have time now. Would you like to try again? Is there something you wanted to tell me?”

“Can I write it down?”

“No way,” he laughs, and reaches out to curl a lock of your hair around his pinky. “I’ve never wanted to hear something so badly in my life, so c’mon.”

And you’ve never been so terrified of saying something so badly in your life either, but all it takes is one mistake of looking up into his face and finding nothing but a quiet earnestness in his fond smile. There’s an innocent anticipation in his half-moon eyes, and you find that Oikawa Tooru has never looked so young as in this one moment.

Your little smile starts to mirror his and your fear wavers. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Mmm.”

“I’m very scared of saying it, so you don’t have to respond at once.”

“Okay.”

“I… well, I like you. As in,  _feelings_  kind of feelings.” He has yet to look away from you, and your words rush out in a heavy flood. “So, uhm, if you… feel the same, that would be really nice, but if you don’t- uhm- that’s okay too. I’ll still be your friend if you want me. I- uhm, what I’m trying to say is that I won’t be hurt. I just… wanted you to know how I felt.”

“I see.” Although spots are beginning to appear in your vision, you can still see his smile spreading and spreading until it reaches his ears. It’s all you can see, and all you care about. It’s a lovely, rare smile.

“I said it,” you manage weakly, and it makes Oikawa laugh.

“You said it. I heard it. It was so much better than your practices.”

“Don’t mention those, please. I’m going to pretend they never happened. Thirty minutes vanished into mystery.”

“I’ll remember them,” he says softly, “you worked hard.”

“I worked hard,” you agree. “And I didn’t run away.”

“No, neither did I.” Oikawa reaches out to cup his hands around your face. Too cool it down, his actions say, but the gentleness betrays a different motive. “Do you think you’ve recovered enough for me to reply?”

“Hm?” You shake your head to clear the fuzziness. “What reply?”

“You wanted to know if I felt the same, dummy.”

Your mouth falls into an ‘O’. “I forgot.”

“Mmm. Maybe I shouldn’t say it if you can’t even remember you asked it.”

“No, I- I want to hear, I promise.” Even if it’s scarier than confessing, you think, but you keep that thought carefully wrapped for yourself. “I’m okay now. Shoot.”

“ _Shoot_ ,” he rolls his eyes, but his thumbs are rubbing ovals against your cheeks. “Okay. Here goes.” He takes a deep breath. “Don’t faint.”

“Don’t faint,” you nod.

Oikawa leans forwards and presses his lips to yours. They’re still much cooler than yours, and he shifts them gently for another second, long enough for you memorize their feel, before quietly settling back into his seat.

“Don’t faint,” he repeats, but his chest heaves up and down erratically for you to catch the way his shoulders rock. “I think your redness is contagious.”

You struggle to find your voice again with a swallow. “I’m sorry.”

Oikawa’s face is as cherry as yours, but he powers through it with another laugh. “It’s okay, I forgive you.”

His voice in the empty classroom makes the air fuzzy again. “You… like me back,” you say to nobody in particular.

“You think?”

“Whoa… maybe I need to lie down. This is too much.”

“Don’t faint,” Oikawa presses a little urgently. “I can’t carry you back home, and the nurse is gone.”

“I’m trying,” you insist, and in the back of your mind, you wonder if him removing his hands from your cheeks might help reduce the nervous load that’s weighing on your chest. “It’s just- you- very-”

“I very,” Oikawa shakes his head. Not waiting for any further explanation from you, he slides his chair back into its original position and smooths the wrinkles from his shirt. “Let’s go get something to cool you down. They’ll still have your strawberries and cream flavour at the FamiMart if we’re fast.”

“Okay.  _Okay_.” You squeeze in a quick deep breathing exercise before you make to grab your bag. Oikawa swipes it from under your fingers, and shrugs when you stare at him.

“Too slow. Come  _on_.”

“Yes, yes,  _alright_.”

He beckons for you to follow him out the door almost impatiently and keeps a good, flustered distance between the two of you with both bags swinging from his shoulder.

You notice that he doesn’t meet your eyes when his hand reaches for yours at the end of the corridor, and you keep a wobbly smile of your own when you squeeze his palm back in an intimate silence.


	75. Oikawa meets up with his ex, and they both still have feelings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> scenario with oikawa and his ex having an awkward run into each other whilst going out with friends ? and they just full on roast each other i nfront of their friends etc and maybe one of the s/o's guy friend tries to make oikawa jealouuusss (maybe a character from a diff team? up to you) because he knows they still love each other and fluffy fluff at teh end please  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: This is too long. I’m too tired. They took over. It’s my bad this got a bit angsty. If there are any drastic pace changes, I’ll go back and correct them later._

When your dad had turned on the news before reaching for his paper this morning, you’d noticed that the weather lady this morning had been especially enthusiastic about the forecast today.

It’s the first ray of good weather in weeks, the rise and fall of temperamental winter weather dipping into spring, and although it had started off a bit misty during morning assembly, it had cleared up dramatically into a full-on sunshine and cloudless azure skies. People, feeble little beings that they are, had started to actually emerge from the entrapment that was secondary education and ventured out onto the basketball pitches to get some exercise done. The girls’ tennis team won the battle for the courts, dashing out to fill in the booking charts zip-stripped onto the green surrounding fence as the boys’ team watched on forlornly.

Plus, aside from the various, many,  _many_  sports teams poking their heads out like reptiles, the beautiful weather had attracted couples and groups out for a good time like moths to a flame.

You’re currently still debating whether or not to grouse about the maddening number of people crammed onto a single pavement, or to swallow the bitter taste and admit that you were no better than the rest of them just by being here. About sixty percent of the student body have decided to wait for the exact same coffee shops and arcades downtown, and several clouds of well-dressed adults, who you think really should be at work, had taken their afternoon off for dates at brand-name stores.

Your ‘group’ of friends that you’re shifting around in the middle of really only consists of the four of you in total: two girls, including you, and two guys. If it isn’t particularly obvious who was which from the corresponding body parts, one would be able to identify the two men, at least a head taller than the general crowd (lots of shorter black-haired people in breezy skirts that day) with massive, satisfied beams on their faces from being able to breathe the fresh air.

The same couldn’t be said for you and your fellow lady, short-legged sufferer. If you had enough room to raise a mirror- who were you kidding, not even your phone- you’d be sure that the expressions on both your faces would be enough to bring about the next typhoon season. Somehow, that seemed to make the guys’ days just that much better.

“I can see your happy mugs.” Miho scowls from her disadvantaged position. “Don’t think you can gloat up there forever.”

Itsuki beams in response, and for a second there you think he might even reach down and shake her hand in congratulations. The sick, sick man. “Where we’re going is  _very_  far away,” he reassures her, “so I’ve got some time.”

“You changed it, didn’t you?” You mutter from your equally disadvantaged position. What a terrible time to be of average height. “I knew there was something evil stirring in your head when you volunteered to choose the place.”

“It’s a beautiful day! C’mon, how long as it been since you’ve been out and about?”

“I feel like compacted trash.”

“Let’s be real, that’s not too far from the mark.”

“Watch it, Itsu.” Kazuo, a comparatively more decent person than the demon child, reaches out with a firm hand and turns Itsuki’s head back to face the front. “Think before you speak- do you really want a suffocating Miho literally biting your ass?”

 _Comparatively_. He’s obviously proud of his statement, and Itsuki grins some more at the reminder of ‘suffocating’. Miho doesn’t look particularly thrilled with the analogy, but is too preoccupied with several people bumping into her shoulder consecutively to bother. Although now both boys are looking ahead, you know them far too well to believe that their shit-eating grin has in any way abated. Probably worsening, even, knowing that Miho’s effectively been cheated out of her rage.

“I will  _still_  bite your ass if you don’t shut up before we get to the café,” she warns. “I live a street away from you. Both of you. You can run, but you can’t hide.”

They’re about to reach around to reply, simply unable to resist the temptation of opening their huge pie-holes just one more time, when you butt in. “Both your moms  _really_  likes me. Who do you think they’re going to defend if we file a complaint, hm?”

Miho struggles against the odds to smack you a tiny high five below waist height. Both Itsuki and Kazuo pause to consider your statemen seriously, and quicken their paces as much as they can between a dozen overlapping legs.

That was a weird thing with you- something about the way you were born, perhaps, an aura, that made you incredibly popular with moms. With their kids, not so much, but you found yourself constantly entertaining several invites from grateful and eager mothers while their kids eye you reproachfully. It made for very awkward dating situations and very useful friendship blackmail.

You look up at the two morons parting the crowd for you two girls to follow. Well, it wasn’t as if it’d ever be a real problem with dumb and dumber up there. Miho had tried when they’d first met, but it only took her about a week to discover how not her type either of them were. Far too tall, and far too much like puppies. Itsuki a pretty annoying, hyperactive golden retriever that really, really loved tennis balls, and Kazuo the sly shiba inu that would literally shank you given the chance.

“Up ahead,” Kazuo’s mellow voice floats backwards for you and Miho. “It really isn’t as far as Itsu made it out to be.”

You squeezed your face between two couples blocking the whole damn road to take a peek. “Is that just the crowd, or is that a line? Please tell me that’s the crowd.”

“Oh my god,” Miho pries her head into the space above yours and the two of you share a collective moment of grief. “That’s the new dessert place, isn’t it? The one with the celebrity owner?”

Kazuo nods mutely, and Itsuki clears his throat. “…Yeah. I heard you say you wanted to check it out for the longest time, so… I though… well, the weather forecast was amazing and everything…”  He slows his steps and sticks an arm out awkwardly to prevent some six people at minimum from running Miho over. “We could, um, come back next time, if you want. It’ll probably suck to wait that long today.”

You exchange a quiet look with Kazuo. He shrugs ever so slightly, and a small, knowing smile starts to grow on his face. He leans forwards, resting his forearm on Itsuki’s back. “What do you say, Miho?” He gestures at the shop with a jerk of his head. “Stay? Or go?”

And even the statues of gods are moved by prayer. Miho would attribute her sudden silence to the oppressive surroundings, of course, and nothing else.

“Let’s give it a try.” She sneaks a glance at the two guys, and glances at you to double check. Your face remains as peaceful as a monk. “I mean… it  _is_  a good day and everything.” Itsuki visibly brightens, and he nods enthusiastically in agreement.

“It is!”

Miho fights the little smile teasing at her lips, but it forces itself through the bars, looking pleased with her choice. “And since Itsu’s been working hard, eavesdropping on my conversations, I think we should stay.”

Kazuo chuckles as he herds you all towards the entrance, acting as a temporary bouncer. “I’m pretty sure it’s not eavesdropping if you’ve been literally hinting into all our faces this past month. You were just missing the flashing neon sign, practically.”

“I like celebrities and desserts,” Miho retorts. “What am I supposed to do about that?”

“Getting us a seat would be a great start,” you answer jokingly, but the landscape of at least two dozen girls with their boyfriends waiting their turn at the cashier seems to grow more daunting by the second. Now that you’ve managed to crowd around the entrance without being stepped on, it seems almost impossible to snatch a table from all the people who seemed to just have arrived with full plates on their tables.

You lay a hand on Miho’s shoulder to keep her upright as Itsuki grabs a hold of your forearm just in case someone whacks you over with a tray. Four pairs of eyes flicker over a possibly aesthetic version of hell, and you sigh loudly enough to cover all the pent-up exasperation between the four of you.

“Do you see anyone you know, Itsu?” Kazuo suggests. And Kazuo’s suggestions somehow always make a celestial sense. “Maybe we could grab some chairs and join them if they aren’t too big a group.” His gaze roves around shrewdly. “It won’t be ideal, but it’s better than having to fight some middle schoolers for seats.”

“I’m down,” you tell him. You roll up your sleeves to your elbows and stretch your fingers.

Kazuo remains unimpressed at your side. “You’re always down for fighting people. Please. Control yourself.”

You roll your sleeves back down dejectedly. “My mom always says that you make a better daughter than I do.”

“Your mom thinks that I make a better everything than you do,” he answers without batting an eyelash. “She sees the truth.”

“If she decides that she loves you enough to put you in a skirt and adopt you, I’m going to have to ask you to not come crying to me.”

Kazuo looks at you amusedly, much like watching a hamster run itself to death on the wheel. “Your mom is a saint. She’s about as likely to put me in anything as she’s likely to fix your manners.”

“Oi, my manners are stellar. Keep going, and I’ll tell on you for being mean.”

“What a tattletale. You’ve got my mom wrapped around your finger, and I’ve got yours. Stalemate. A mom for a mom.”

“Mind if the both of you just shut up about your moms for a damned second?” Miho points at a corner hidden past some decorative shelves. “I think Itsu’s hit jackpot over there.”

“Ah! I knew we could always count on our resident socialite.” Kazuo claps his hands, appeased. “I believe he does more socializing in an afternoon than we’d do all month.”

“That’s because you need to leave your house to make friends, Kazu.”

“That’s not true. I’m still in a club.”

“What, the going-home-after-school club?” Miho snorts.

Kazuo grins. “That’d be the one. We’ve yet to miss a single afternoon.”

“I can’t believe you got that actually registered as a club.” And he had. The principal had a look of extreme fatigue after an hour-long discussion with Kazuo about the validity of clubs that technically do not gather and take place outside of campus. Kazuo, on the other hand, had looked incredibly serene in his victory and offered to treat the principal out for lunch to apologize for the trouble. The invitation had been declined with a ‘no thank you’ faster than he’d said ‘yes I do’ at the altar.

Itsuki breaks into a brisk trot on his meandering way back to the four of you. For a man who had just saved his friends from the suffering of waiting indefinitely in a cramped venue, he wore a rather guilty expression.

Miho points it out immediately.

“You look constipated. What’s wrong? Did they say no?”

“Not exactly…” Itsuki’s brows furrow even more running whatever he wasn’t saying in his mind, but keeps going, determined not to look anyone in the eye. “So… how much do you guys not want to wait? Uh, actually let me rephrase that.” He peeks at you from under his veil of awkwardness. “How much do  _you_  not want to wait?”

Unless it’s actually your mother sitting there, or maybe your maths teacher with his wife, you don’t see a problem with it. Still, you’re curious. “A pretty decent amount,” you answer cautiously. “Why, is it the president?”

Itsuki mutters something underneath his breath, but to your disappointment it’s far too loud in the café to catch. Kazuo nudges him out of his stupor and shrugs. “If she says she’s down, we’re down too. It’s just a friend, right? I know all your friends. They’re fine.”

“Fine,” Itsuki echoes almost facetiously, but he shakes his head. “Alright, well, he’s only with one other person, and there’s half the table free. We’ll need an extra two chairs, though.”

“I’ll go ask for some. Text me your orders so I can line up.” Kazuo juts his chin out in the direction of the corner. “Off you all go.”

“He, huh?” Miho muses as you three squeeze your way towards the back. “Do I know him?”

“Yeah. …Yeah.”

“What is this, Cluedo?” You tut, rolling your eyes. “It’s just a dude with his friend. I’m more interested in if we’ve got enough space for four of us without cramping them.”

This time Itsuki really does laugh. A cackling sort of chuckle that lasts only for a sharp burst until Miho jabs him with an elbow.

“Oof. He’ll make room. It’s a pretty large round table so we don’t have to worry unless you wanted to break out a laptop or something.”

“Oh, believe me,” both you and Miho pipe up, “we’re not doing jack on such a good afternoon.”

“Good.” Itsuki grins. “‘Cus they’ve covered half the table with food.”

You turn the corner just when you’re about to comment that it’s not very healthy to eat an actual lunch consisting only of cake. Almost immediately, it no longer surprises you that someone would actually do that. Two someones.

“Thanks for letting us sit,” Itsuki quips, throwing up some thumbs up. He tugs over a chair they offer. “We probably won’t be up in your grill for long.”

“No worries,” Hanamaki waves it off with a lazy hand. “It’s dog eat dog out there. Better hide from the worst.”

“Man, it’s like all the girls got GPS directed to just this one store. I’d kinda hoped to chill for a while here, but next time, I guess.”

You’ve completely forgotten that you’re still standing there like some misplaced Ikea lamp until Miho pulls you down gently by the arm. You sink into your seat like mochi- a left out for too long and almost fermenting clump of moist dough.

Hanamaki slides his eyes slowly to meet yours, and his lips quirk up into one of his trademark, infernal smirks. “Yo. It’s been a while.”

You take a slow, deep breath as innocuously as possible. It’s all going to be fine. It’s just Hanamaki. You’ve always liked Hanamaki. …Most of the time.

“Hey.” You’re relieved that your voice sounds more normal than normal. “Having an early dinner?”

Everyone at the table looks down at the five and a half different types of cake on the table with undisguised amusement. Hanamaki barks out a laugh in his mellow, sandpapery timbre. “We like cake.” He looks to his right to his companion, who seems to be struggling to decide between sulking and nonchalance. “Well,  _I_  like cake. Tooru’s more into just the fruit between layers.”

“I’m friends with the owner. We got all these for half off.” Oikawa declares almost defensively, his shoulders broadening as he does so. He’d chosen nonchalance, then. You can understand. Hanamaki simply glances at him much as someone watches their cat occupying their favourite armchair.

Miho in her spectator mode, however, seems to have flipped the ‘on’ button at the suggestion of ‘friends’ and ‘owner’. Leaping forwards in her seat, her eyes sparkle a million watts at Oikawa like disco lights.

“ _Really?_  Are you guys super close? What’s he like? Oh my god,  _is he here right now_? Why didn’t you ever  _tell me_ , Oikawa?”

“Probably because I knew you’d be like this,” Oikawa sniffs and pulls a blueberry marble cheesecake closer towards himself like a talisman from crazy. “You’ve always been batty about their group.”

“Is. He.  _Here_?”

Itsuki, although looking just ever so slightly forlorn at Miho’s excitement about a guy, still manages to smile fondly. “What are you going to do if he was?” He asks.

“I- well, I’m not sure,” Miho answers, slowing down a little. “I’m not actually insane, even if you guys don’t think so, so I guess I’d just… I don’t know. Ask for a picture? Do you think he’d mind?”

Both Hanamaki and Itsuki watch Oikawa expectantly, and he crumbles one blueberry bite after another underneath their waiting silence. After half the cake’s gone, Miho visibly deflating per second, Oikawa finally sighs and drags his fingers through his hair. He shoots Miho one last reproachful look and pulls out his phone from his jacket pocket.

“He’s updating inventory in the back. I’ll let him know you’re coming. Or- is anyone going with you? I’ll bet all my cash that you’re going to get lost if you go alone.”

“I’ll take her,” Itsuki offers. “Do we just follow the cashier?”

“Yeah.” Hanamaki describes the route with a squiggly motion of his hand. You watch as Itsuki’s expression morphs into something more confused by the second. “Follow the cashier to the left and there should be a small door past the kitchens. Just knock and say Oikawa sent you.”

“Gotcha.” Itsuki catches Miho’s bag before it falls on the ground, and beckons with his head. “Alright, let’s go meet your dream husband.”

“I- Really, Itsu, I’m not  _that_  delusional. He’s not even my favourite out of them all.”

“Wow, harsh. I’m sure he’ll be glad to know.”

“Don’t  _tell_ him! Jeez!” Miho throws your table a final, wary look before she’s swallowed up by people. “We’ll we back,” she announces, but her eyes are fixed solidly on you. “Hang on, alright? Call if you guys need anything.”

“We won’t,” Oikawa answers.

They vanish two seconds later in the swimming crowd, like a film played in slow motion. Their absence suddenly leaves a blanket of awkward silence hovering over the three of you left at the table, one that none of you had the foresight to predict. Oikawa looks like he’s regretting it more now than ever, and not for the sake of his friend.

“Well. That’s that, then,” you remark to nobody in particular. Gone in a whirlwind within a minute of encroaching someone else’s table, you’ve definitely been abandoned in a pretty pickle. It’s almost as if tapping your fingers wouldn’t do the sudden dilation of time justice.

Oikawa clicks his tongue when he hears your comment, but says nothing. Catching it, you look at him stonily. “What?”

“Nothing,” he replies with heavy meaning. “You can keep saying ‘wow it’s awkward’ like it’s ever worked.”

“Mmm, and you’re very helpful. The master of making people feel comfortable.”

He raises an eyebrow and points towards where Miho and Itsuki had disappeared. “I’d say I’m pretty good. And I’m supposed to be the one at fault when you can’t notice?”

“Wow.  _Wow_. Okay, maybe one day someone’ll record you and you’ll get to actually hear yourself talk.”

“Pot, kettle. I know exactly what I’m saying.”

“Which only makes it worse.”

“Hey,  _hey_ ,” interrupts Hanamaki. “We’re not starting world war three today.” He pushes a plate of cake towards you. Chunks of plump peaches trapped in a cloud of whipped cream greets you cheerily from between the layers of chiffon. “We’ve got extra. Eat up.”

Both you and Oikawa stare at the offending confection.

“Could this be, uhm, peach?”

Hanamaki frowns, puzzled. He gives it a second look over, looking as if he’s considering answering with banana. “Seems so?”

“She hates peach.” Oikawa intercepts with obvious pain in his voice. “It made her vomit once as a kid and she’s never had it since.” Hanamaki nods with an inaudible ‘ohhh’, and Oikawa clicks his tongue yet again as if irritated that he’d been forced to care for a split second. His attention whips over to you. “A good third of the stuff here’s got peach. Does the invisible fourth person have enough sense to get you something you can actually eat?”

“The invisible fourth would, if his helpful trio had done as they were told and texted me their orders.” Kazuo’s disembodied voice appears from somewhere to your left, and all three of you jump in your seats. In the utter awkwardness of the situation, your prayers for the clock to tick faster had completely wiped your memory of your lost friend. “Sorry,” he adds, “was I interrupting something?”

“Only a war,” Hanamaki mutters. Kazuo looks on with interest. “I didn’t know she couldn’t eat peach.”

“And I’ve got dibs on the strawberry.” Oikawa sticks his tongue out at you. “So you’d better get your own cake.”

Kazuo lowers himself into one of the two chairs he’d brought with him and places the little numbered stick, tucked under his arm, onto the table. “Well. Luckily, the three of you are terribly unadventurous, so I just ordered what you always eat. Nutella and strawberry.”

“Thanks,” you exhale in relief. “Sorry to make you do all the work today, Kazu.”

Kazuo smiles gently in response. He doesn’t believe in accepting thanks if it’s something he had opted to do, but he’s always grateful for the sentiment. And although he’s unsure of precisely what he’d appeared in the middle of, there seems as if it’s more than just the dessert that you you’re thanking him for.

“Nice seeing you again, Hanamaki, Oikawa. Thanks for offering us a seat.”

As with Itsuki’s thanks, Hanamaki waves it off, and Oikawa simply huffs and takes another large bite. Your friend, the master that he is, shows no reaction whatsoever at the thick atmosphere enveloping you all.

“So,” he props his chin up with a hand. “How’s the team these days? It’s almost time for spring’s prelims, isn’t it?”

 _Of course, he follows volleyball_ , you’re tempted to mutter, but you hold your tongue. You’re at least confident enough that you’re capable of being tactful if Oikawa could hold his silence. However, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t irk you just a tiny bit.

“Yeah, we’ve mostly been reviewing material for now.” Hanamaki slumps a little in relief at the lifeline tossed his way. The awkwardness must be making him talk more eagerly to you than you’ve heard him in years. “We’re just chilling out a bit before the training camp starts. They’ve got some pretty crazy guys this year in other schools, so we can’t really take it easy.”

“We’ve never taken it easy.” Oikawa frowns at the statement. “We’re going to crush the other teams, this year more so than before.”

“Right. That’ll involve sleep, Tooru,” chides Hanamaki, “which you’ve kind of forgotten exists unless Hajime texts you at the dead of night again.”

Now, you’re perfectly aware that this no longer has anything to do with you, like it hasn’t been for a good while, but there’s something finicky about making memories- make them well enough, and they simply won’t let you go. Almost out of habit, your fingers are already tightening around the bottom of your shirt clutched in your hand, and you realize that you’re more irritated that you’re being irritated than actually being irritated. That, perhaps, makes you more irritated.

“I guess nothing’s changed,” you murmur. Nobody seems to have caught it, but Kazuo watches you silently from the corner of his eye, and Oikawa begins avoiding your gaze completely.

You badly want something else to look at other than your jeans, and to close the curtain on the little scenes that begin to swim past the back of your mind like a pantomime. There was a reason why you’d stopped following your school’s volleyball team, even if they were the pride and joy of Seijou. The scenes never truly stopped until you stopped yourself from caring.

Hanamaki’s voice suddenly floats to the surface of your consciousness, and you blink yourself out from your head.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I asked, are you alright?” He repeats, sounding unexpectedly kind.

It’s either the first time he’s tried to comfort you, or the first time allowed your need for comfort to be visible.

You’d had always gone to great lengths to submerge your pain deep into privacy. Private from everyone, anyone, and even from the one who had all the keys in his hands. Even if the password was just a quietly murmured question, or a three-worded text, those fingers always plucked the wrong key from the bunch.

Hanamaki’s prompt warms you significantly, enough for your cheeks to manage a lopsided smile of sorts. “I’m good,” you reassure him. “Just kind of hungry. This talking stuff is tiring for antisocial people like me.”

“I get it,” nods Hanamaki. “Especially on this kind of day.”

The atmosphere almost grazes the fields of ‘okay, this isn’t so bad’, until your gaze is pulled to the side almost magnetically in response to the sudden sensation of being stared at. Oikawa had changed his tune and was watching you with a sort of muted judgement- or was it frustration? Back when you could still tell the difference, it had often spilled and mixed with each other in the maelstrom that was his temper, and the ghostly hurt long passed wrestled free from your attempts to stay calm.

“What are you glaring at me for now?” The moment you say it, you regret how much it sounds like him.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“Then your nothings must be the heaviest nothings in the world. If there’s something I’ve done to get on your nerves, just say it.”

Oikawa leans forwards and smacks both forearms on the table, shaking it to its roots. The other two bystanders reach out to keep the plates from tipping. “Half the time you open your mouth,” he says with contrasting calm, “it’s to call me out.”

“I wouldn’t if there wasn’t so much to call you out on.”

“That’s a great strategy. How has nagging worked for you so far that hasn’t before?”

“Oh, so you  _did_  hear me all those times. I thought I might’ve been talking to a brick wall for a whole damn year.”

“I certainly wasn’t going to stop you from doing whatever gives you meaning in your life.”

“Meaning my ass. Like I could stop you from yours.”

“Have you learned how to identify responsibilities from recreation yet? I suggest you better get a move on before your next partner discovers that they’d actually signed up for an adoptive parent.”

“And you? Are you picking your way through your groupies, or still hoping that your volleyball tapes are going to ask you out on a date?”

“I take it that your boybands have dropped by and chatted you up, have they?”

“Food’s here,” interrupts Kazuo. He gestures at the wary looking waitress who’s carefully sliding plates onto the crowded table as unnoticeably as possible. He doesn’t blame her- it’s like walking a minefield shaped like lollipops. Even Hanamaki looks rather weary from the unstoppable banter, and he shoves Oikawa’s plate closer to his face.

“Eat and shut up,” he orders. “Take pity on the people who have to listen to you, seriously.”

Kazuo doesn’t comment. He watches as Oikawa spoons lumps of cream and fruit into his mouth grumpily, and you right beside him, poking moodily at your cake. And that was definitely a bad sign. Nutella plus strawberry has always been enough to make you squirm in your seat like a child of five.

“We can always move on,” he suggests mildly. “There’s always more to cake and dessert than volleyball.”

“Amen,” Hanamaki chimes in from behind a mouthful. “Let’s talk about school. Always a fascinating topic. How are your grades?”

“Oh God,” you can’t help but groan. “I’d rather talk about volleyball. This topic is giving me the chills just from imagining my mom’s response.”

Hanamaki breaks into a grin. “I take that as a ‘they’re not very good, Makki.’”

“You know mothers,” you say, slowly finding it in yourself to smile, “it’s never enough.”

“That’s probably because it really isn’t enough.” Kazuo laughs. “I told you, you should just cede your position to me.”

“What, as daughter? Am I supposed to just go and take your place?”

“I’m just letting you know that my mom is used to my grades. They’re a bit different from yours, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.” Kazuo jokes with his usual deadpan, but something in your face gives him pause. The rest of his conversation softens before they’re expressed, and the shark-like quality of his prior smirk smudges into a gentler amusement.

He sinks lower in his chair to get closer to reach your drooped crown. “Really,” he murmurs, “you shouldn’t put yourself down so much. I know you do when you think nobody’s looking.”

He watches the flickers chasing across your brows, waiting for the lightbulbs to spark back into brightness, and only sits back up straight when there’s enough light in your eyes to his satisfaction. In a slow reminder, Kazuo slips your spoon back into your hand before reaching for his own.

About to take a cautious bite of his milk coloured cake, Kazuo glances up abruptly enough to catch Hanamaki focused on him with a curious expression. Both you and Oikawa are focused sullenly on your plates, and Kazuo takes the chance to nod slowly in a wordless reply. Hanamaki blinks once, twice, and returns to his peach slice calmly.

“You should hear the way my mom bugs me for the grades of everyone else in the team. I daresay she might want a spreadsheet of it printed out double sided, or something.”

Oikawa’s fork stops halfway to his mouth, and his mouth twisting into odd little patterns just staring at Hanamaki.

“Hey. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Hanamaki shrugs upon seeing the bewildered look. “What? Do you think I actually like talking about exams?”

“Pretty sure I know you’d rather eat wasabi sushi than actually imagining the little red marks on your papers.”

Hanamaki nods sagely. “Yes, yes. The mother figure frightens all.”

“I see moms are a common topic.” Kazuo grins. “The final boss, more or less.”

“The first and last obstacle in life,” Hanamaki sighs. “I think she just wants me to quit everything and get married. Says that I’ll be whipped into shape by a good woman.”

“Maybe she just wants you whipped,” you snigger. His lips twitch upwards.

“Most likely.”

Kazuo nudges his plate into yours, prompting you to reach over and steal a bite of his banana custard. “Maybe it’s an advantage if you date someone who already knows your parents,” Kazuo suggests as you chew.

“You think so? The last time a girl came over to hand me some notes, my mom flipped out and thought I was sneaking out at night behind her back.”

“Does your mom not trust you, or is she just extremely concerned about who you date?” You wonder mid-chew. You take the tissue Kazuo offers you and dab the edges of your mouth. There’s a lot more cream you’d gotten over your cheeks than you had expected. “Thanks.”

“Mhmm.”

Hanamaki seems to have magically perked up within the past minute or so, fixes his gaze on the both of you he fires rapidly about his family. It definitely surprises you, considering that he’s never been this interested in sharing details about himself all the time you’ve known him. “I think she’s just unhealthily obsessed about finding me a stable family,” he continues, “she probably also thinks that I get distracted by pretty faces.”

That reminds you strongly of someone. You sneak a peek, and find a stubborn flush on Oikawa’s face that’s attributed more to sheepishness than embarrassment. You can’t deny that the sight of it triggers in you a mean streak of satisfaction. At least he knows his pitfalls. Or rather, one of his  _numerous_  pitfalls.

“There’s nothing wrong with pretty faces,” you assure Hanamaki, “as long as you don’t have to be clubbed over the head by personality to notice that it exists too.”

Oikawa buries his flush deeper into his cake.

Kazuo, on the other hand, splits into a wide grin and throws an arm over the back of your chair. The stretch pushes him to shift closer, to make up for the gap between your seats. “You must have a pretty strong arm then,” he teases, “with all the clubbing you need to do.”

“Are you calling me ugly?” You demand indignantly, but Kazuo only seems pleased that it’s brought a wicked glint to your eyes. “I must’ve clubbed you stupid, then, since my face clearly isn’t distracting.”

“I’m not distracted,” Hanamaki offers, but is ignored.

Kazuo simply grins his shark grin, and leans his face to yours, examining your features with sudden dedication. The table waits with loaded silence as he begins along the wisps of hair that crown your face, then roving along the curve of your eyes and the splash of muddy maroon in the pale café lighting. His gaze traces, almost tenderly, past the colour in your cheeks and down the slope of your nose, coming to a slow, lazy flourish on your stained nutella mouth.

After a delicate pause, he stretches back in his seat, satisfied. “I wouldn’t say distracting,” he concludes, “but you don’t have to club me quite as hard as you think you do.”

“A compliment from a notoriously picky man,” you tease, but you can’t prevent the way your eyes widen at the impromptu flattery. “This isn’t going to be good for my ego.”

He smiles, his eyes twinkling with a hidden knowing. “Considering the last time you’d been complimented was around the last century, I’d say this didn’t do that much damage.”

You know that he meant it as a joke, but it’s impossible for you not feel the sudden rush of disappointment at how true that statement rang. The company you shared only heightened the acute sense of awareness of all that’s changed, and yet, how nothing’s that different if you really put your mind to it. Regardless of the multiple attempts you make at pulling up the relevant memories of Oikawa’s affectionate words, the audio is always muted, the shapes of his mouth blurred into the greying background.

The arm you’d almost forgotten about behind you, reaches a hand to grip your shoulder. It was a tight, encouraging hold, and instead of feeling whatever languid comfort words would have brought, you felt your back straightening instead, along with your confidence.

You didn’t have to look up to see the grim, steadfast expression that Kazuo always had on when worried. “Don’t worry, I’m fine. It’s difficult to be anything but after being flattered.”

Although he’d been sitting in patience silence, Hanamaki jerks forward in apology upon seeing your face fall. “And I was just kidding. You look fine, so, uh, don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“Thanks,” you smile. “Are you hitting on me too? What on earth did they put in these cakes?”

While Hanamaki shoots his uncharacteristically wordless companion a wary look, Kazuo laughs at your idea. “Knowing you, you’d want to buy whatever they dropped in these in bottles.”

“Seriously. Making-people-be-really-nice is something the world could do more of.”

“I’m hurt.” Kazuo places a hand on his heart. “Am I not really nice?”

You raise an eyebrow at him, but he only appears more entertained. “Have you switched souls with someone else? Since when have you ever described yourself as nice?”

“You’re not wrong there. But you like me anyway.”

“Well, yes,” you admit, swirling the words around your tongue fully before letting them loose. “But it’s definitely not because you’re sweet. If I relied on that for sustenance, I’d starve on the fifth day.”

“Have you even ever liked sweet?” Hanamaki prods, propping his head up nonchalantly with a hand. “Or is this a sudden change in taste from before?”

“I- well, hah.” Perhaps it’s something about the nature of the question, or maybe the company, or even the ridiculousness of sitting at a bursting café answering questions you’d hear from a therapist at four in the afternoon, that makes the irony sink into your weak laugh like sand. “Do you think I should start liking sweet? It’ll probably save me a lot of… uhm…”

“…heartache,” Kazuo finishes for you, his voice a balm for your scabbed wounds. “It’s an unfortunate fact of life, how we can’t choose who we’re drawn to.”

The statement blankets the table a second time with a haze of heavy reflection. Thoughts flicker, personal experiences dance across ideas and Kazuo lifts his arm back up from your chair silently, and tucks it back into his pocket.

Oikawa suddenly rises from his seat, an inscrutable expression on his face, and the three of you all startle at the sudden movement. “I’m done with my food.” Whatever confection remains on the table quickly becomes saturated in the slow, acrid tone dominant his usually airy voice. “You three can keep talking, I’m leaving.”

He looks to Hanamaki to tell him to text when he’s done, but Oikawa’s gaze is several worlds away, making contact with nobody. Your mind reminds you once again that it wasn’t your business when you sat down, and it still isn’t your business now, but your head- the slave to the emotions your heart pumps into it depends on its mood, follows his back as it turns from side to side, until the crowd hides him from your small table in the corner.

It isn’t your business. Most definitely not. But the view of his back cannot but scream loneliness until your vision swims with the effort of pretending you don’t care.

This time Kazuo isn’t there to hand you a flotation device. Hanamaki’s thoughts drag him into a pensive silence, and you’re left in your wooden chair, drowning in all the ache that you’ve stoppered with the assistance of Oikawa’s presence. He’s taken the bottle’s cap with him, each step further he takes, and along with it flows the rest of the fight in you.

You haven’t been this tired in a long, long time, and it shows when your hands tremble as you reach for your cooled mug. This was supposed to be a calm day out, not an emotional exfoliation that scrubs off all your calluses, leaving only the separation behind as smooth and fresh as a baby’s bottom.

“They’re coming back,” Kazuo slowly informs the table. He waves the notification on his phone for you to see. “They want to thank Oikawa, but I’ve told them that he’s gone.”

“Gone, huh?” repeats Hanamaki thoughtfully. “Hm. I hope they had a good time, anyway.”

“They said they did. Or, uh, more like Miho did. Itsuki didn’t write anything.”

“We’ll ask them,” you say firmly. “We’ll ask them if they had a really, bloody good time, because seriously, someone has to have.”

Neither of the men say anything about the odd determination in your voice, and Hanamaki shrugs. He points over to your far right, and you turn your head to watch as Miho practically skips back with all her youth bundled up in her steps, with a softly smiling Itsuki following behind.

“I can’t believe he left without waiting,” Miho bursts onto the scene with vigour. “Doesn’t Oikawa want to know if we terrorized his friend or not?”

You rearrange their chairs for them, and they collapse into their seats.

“He was… tired, I think,” answers Hanamaki. “Honestly I don’t think he was as worried as he pretended he was.”

“Nothing new there.” Miho rolls her eyes. “Honestly if he’d just show what he really thought just a little more, then maybe he’d save us all the headache of trying to figure it out.”

“You get used to it.” Hanamaki smiles. “It’s what makes him special, eh?”

Special is definitely a word for it, you think, and from everyone else’s expressions, they’re thinking the same. All except for Kazuo, who seems to be slowly reverting back to his normal, all-knowing demeanour. His blank face is definitely suspicious, but you can’t for the life of you figure out what there is to be so odd about.

“Did you have fun?” Kazuo asks. “Was he as nice as you hoped?”

“ _Yes_. Goodness, he was a saint! I think he’d had some fans swarm him for signs earlier in the day, and he’d been hiding out in the back for a break. God, I can’t believe I barged in there like that, really.”

“You didn’t seem to mind.” Itsuki points out. “Prove your regret by deleting those thirty photos you took.”

“You’re crazy.” Miho clenches her phone even tighter in her fist. “You’re not touching my phone.”

Itsuki sinks back against his seat and crosses his arms across his broad chest with a grin. “See?”

“Nothing to see, move on, move on.” Miho shoos figuratively into the air, but her cheeks are stretched into an unwilling smile, laughter itching at her lips. “You were in the photos too! How could you talk about deleting them?”

He shrugs and shakes his head. Reaching across the table for a clean fork, he digs into his neglected dessert, pleased with the burst of raspberry flavour. “We’ve got a bus to catch,” he mumbles between mouthfuls, “did you know we’ve spent ages in there?”

Miho does turn a bit contrite at the reminder. Her hand reaches out from under the table to grab yours in a silent apology, clutching your fingers so tightly you’re unsure if she’s reassuring herself, or you. “We really are sorry, Makki, we ended up not really having much time to catch up with you.”

“Nah, it’s all good.” He too, shrugs, appearing for a moment as a mirror image of Itsuki. “I appreciated the extra space. We can always catch up whenever, you know.”

“Okay.” Miho sighs in relief, and smiles, “okay. I’ll hold you to that.”

“Everything went alright then?” Itsuki swallows his last mouthful and wipes some stray wisps of cream off his face with a turn of his wrist. “Nothing… uhm, everyone turned out alright, yeah?” He attempts to turn to glance at you worriedly out of the corner of his eye. It’s not subtle enough that Hanamaki doesn’t notice, but your heart swells at the gesture.

“Everyone turned out alright,” you tell him, and the tension in his spine drains like a storm unplugged. “Thank you for helping us get a seat, Itsu.”

“Oh. That was nothing.”

“What time is our bus?” Kazuo cuts in, his voice placid. “I think the sky’s gone a bit dark outside.”

“Uhm, five thirty. It’s two blocks away from here.” Itsuki draws out his phone with a practiced flourish and checks the time. “We’re almost there.”

“Alright,” you say. “Well, let’s get ready to head back out.”

Stretching behind to pick up jackets, fumbling here and there to account for items, the four of you take a while to get to your feet, still twisting here and there to confirm that everything’s in order. Hanamaki watches from his seat, plates now almost empty, and a carefully peaceful look on his face.

The atmosphere, you have to admit, isn’t even remotely similar to the one that had followed you in. The calm one is, oddly enough, Itsuki, with this contemplative movements as he waits for everyone to pick up their belongings. Miho’s excitement has been displaced into anxiousness, the adrenaline pumping in another direction; her hand remains tightly gripped around yours at all times, her thumb occasionally squeezing whatever she can get a hold of. Kazuo seems to have morphed into a zen master; his face immoveable, his smile calculatedly smooth, and his actions too helpful for him to be truly putting his heart into them. It irks you to no end, how there’s something off, something different, but you can’t put your finger on it.

“You three head on out,” he says as he slings his jacket over an arm. “I’ll catch up once I’ve cleaned up some of the table.”

And, there isn’t ever a point in arguing. Neither of the three of you have any objections to share, not when you all know that whatever it is, it’d be rebuffed with pinpoint logic. Itsuki leads the way with a hand, and Miho pulls you solidly beside her until you’re all safely several steps outside of the hubbub that’s still brewing in the pale café.

Kazuo waits until you’re all safely hidden away by the masses to return his attention to the table. He does, to his credit, plan on tidying up the plates and bringing them to the counter. That doesn’t mean he can’t do something else in the meantime, of course. With slow movements, he waits patiently for the next move.

“I need your number,” Hanamaki announces. “When this either blows up in our faces, or works like a damned charm, I’m going to notify you nonetheless.”

“Mhmm.” Kazuo pulls out a neatly ripped piece of paper and a pen and scribbles his number with ease. Hanamaki takes the proffered sheet between two fingers, gives it a quick glance, and laughs raucously.

“It’s a shame you don’t play volleyball. You’ve got to be some mad genius.”

“No, I’m really not.” Kazuo simply grins. “I just know how to get things moving.”

“Do they just accept that you just do your own thing when you want to?”

“In general. But, like you said, this may or may not blow up in our faces. It’s my first time trying matchmaking, I gotta say.”

“And you knew. Just in a few seconds.”

Kazuo raises an eyebrow, the grin sharpening without mercy. “And so did you. You just didn’t opt to move.”

Hanamaki’s eyes glitter with muted knowledge, and he holds out a sturdy hand to Kazuo.

“I’ll text you. They’re waiting for you outside.”

Kazuo grips the hand firmly, before turning around in a swift movement to disappear after his friends.

* * *

After everyone had dissipated with rather mixed emotions, you’d been left to a complete wreckage of emotions. They’d take turns, spinning from right to left, flickering from blue, to red, and back to a bright yellow until you’ve turned on some extremely loud Chopin and hollered your way through several etudes without needing to worry about neighbour complaints.

Your mother had quietly decided to leave you alone for the rest of the night, and you have yet to be sure about whether or not you really want to be left alone with the pandemonium inside your head. Every thought has an opinion, and some start to scream to let themselves be heard.

You don’t want to fall asleep picturing things you’ve no business bothering about. The café, this afternoon, or anything to do with things well locked away have no right to drag themselves like a chain to your ankle, to creep into your night without being reined in.

The image of Oikawa’s back, receding into its sudden solitude, drags its aching claws along the walls of your frail, useless little blood organ, and you hate yourself for hating it.

Hating is only for people who care. And you care enough that it kills you to pretend you don’t for a moment longer.

Twice you attempt to tell yourself that you’re only being a better person, and twice you tell yourself to stop bullshitting.

You care. Whether as a human, as a friend, or as a memory long passed flitting past you with the irresistible allure of nostalgia, the burning admittance that nobody deserves to have a back that lonely fuels you to pick up your phone between icy hands.

You turn your lights off, just keeping that lone reading light lining your bedside corner with a soft, streetlamp yellow. The air is still cool, but where the light touches keeps your hands from freezing themselves into cowardice.

You don’t want to regret this. You don’t want to have anything to do with things not done, things untried. You don’t want to forget that you’re both human, that you’re both existing at the same time, and that maybe is all the fate humans can muster.

It sounds so dramatic that you can’t help but laugh shrilly underneath your blankets.

It was just an afternoon. Just an old hurt. Just another day gone by. Another one is coming, dawning the moment your eyes fall close.

You just want to see him a little happier again, you know? With or without you.

The first word is the hardest. The rest are spilled milk.

_Are you okay?_

_Asleep?_

Your finger never touches on ‘send’, as the screen flashes and an incoming message conquers the space on your screen. You tuck the edge of your blanket firmly underneath your chin.

 _I’m awake_. You type.  _What’s wrong?_

Oikawa has never been one to make you wait on messages. His fingers can buzz through the air like hummingbirds, forming letters faster than bees. There’s barely time for you to grow nervous.

_You didn’t erase my number._

_No, why would I?_

_Why not?_

It makes you sigh. Wordplay before bed, your favourite pastime.  _You didn’t either._

_No. I didn’t._

You daren’t interrupt the pregnant pause. The ‘typing’ indicator doesn’t light up immediately, but it’s coming. You know it’s coming, as it always has.

_I was too angry today. I’m sorry about that._

Pigs must be flying. You wonder if your cheeks are turning up into a smile, or if they’re just cramping up your face.  _I’m sorry too. I was kind of a dick._

_We both were. Are._

_That hasn’t changed?_

_We’ve still got that in common, it seems._

You pause before you type, rethinking your words at least four times.  _Is that all we have in common anymore?_

Loneliness, you think.

_Maybe._

Not the answer you’re expecting, but an answer worthy enough of his temperament. Another message pops up before you can conjure up a fitting response.  _Kazuo seems to have more in common with you now than I do._

_We’ve got our similarities. We’ve got our differences._

_An answer better unanswered._

It’s the least he deserves, in your opinion. A taste of his infuriating medicine.  _I learned from the best._

_Wow. I was right. We still are dicks._

_I like to think that I was nice, sometimes._

_You were._ The fastest reply yet, as if he’s prepared this answer a day ahead for your question.  _You still are, I wager._

_So. Have we reached the stage where we go over our memories, sip a sangria under the sunset and walk away strangers?_

_I don’t think we can ever be strangers. We tried today, didn’t we?_

_Yeah. We sucked at it. Maybe because we skipped the sangria._

_I’m on a team. You can smell sangria after you drink it._

A confession: more than once you’ve imagined him quitting volleyball, quitting that team and quitting everything he disliked about himself. It wasn’t so bad, except that it also made him quit anything he loved about himself also. That was a bit worse.

_What do you want me to call you now? Oikawa? Volleyball captain?_

_I don’t care._

_Thanks._

_Calling me requires you to talk to me. Are you still going to do that?_

_I’m talking to you now, aren’t I?_

_I think I know why._

_Don’t._ You respond instantaneously. Your fingers don’t even have time to shake with how much you don’t want to go there. Not right now, not like this. Maybe never.  _Please._

 _I won’t._ He types again.  _I won’t_.

_Okay._

_I’m sorry._

_You said that already. I’m sorry too._

_No, you don’t get it yet._

_Get what?_

You watch as the icon moves, and stops, and moves, and stops. Your own fingers are poised on top of the keyboard, rigid and ready to spring into action again.

_I’ll tell you._

_Okay, tell me._

_Meet you on top of the second gym on Friday. After class._

Oikawa never asks questions when he knows there can be an answer he doesn’t want. The warm sensation of mild exasperation is more familiar than you’d expected it to be, and it creases your lips into a smile you’ve yet to realize.

_Are you going to ditch me there?_

_No. I’ll be there._

Beginnings were always quiet little affairs. Secretive, private embers in hidden spaces, in the darkness with a single lamp casting the shadow of your arms lifted above your face. The strangest thing about words is that the more and more you use them, the easier and easier they are to say.

_Okay then. I’ll be there._

There isn’t a promise, and there’s nothing to hold him accountable. The conversation ends with all small snuff of breath, and both your icons blip from green back into grey. If you didn’t look, it would be as if it had nothing had happened. This interaction had never existed, and nothing had changed after an afternoon.

Tomorrow will be a Thursday. Calmly, you set your alarm for seven in the morning, just in time for a late breakfast.

The reading light switches off. Your phone lies still, charging, half covered by your pillow, with a stream of messages and possibility settling quietly beneath a lock screen for the night.


	76. Kuroo and Ennoshita get pulled along by their spontaneous s/o

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> ennoshita and a character of your choice? i was going to say tsukki but it looks like he's 70% of your wip anyway where their s/o (fem pronouns please) is the most spontaneous being they have ever met and she always comes up with new things to do even if its at 4:30 in the morning she'll just bang on their door and be like 'lets go' with no explanation whatsoever until they get to the place or she's just always doing random shit and it makes the boys' life that much more interesting  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I think, rather than a happening piece, this is more of an experience piece. If one could read with their eyes closed, I’d be sure to suggest doing so. Listen to something that reminds you of a snowstorm.  
>  The next ‘character of your choice’ instalment is in the works. Together they’d be too long to put in a single post. I hope you like it!_

_“Hi.”_

“…Hi.”

_“Good morning.”_

“Not really, no.”

She laughs softly into the receiver. The sound glides along the muted static and  **Ennoshita**  hears her familiar tinkle through his touchscreen, haphazardly sandwiched between his ear and the pillow with practiced precision.

_“I’m sorry.”_

“No,” he grumbles, “you’re not.”

_“Not really, no.”_ He can hear her smile across the atoms between their phones; not a speck of apology in sight.

He almost tells her not to laugh, but her amusement is silent. Perhaps it’s because he’s still more than half asleep—as he should be at four in the morning—but maybe it’s how he’s like when he hears her voice; what his mind twirls into patterns of her laughter falling into the way the night sounds past his bedroom window.

“It’s four,” he tells her, as if she doesn’t already know. As if it had ever mattered to her. There was only day and night in her twenty-four hours: when the sun was up, and when the sun was down. They both had their own little gifts to bring her which she, naturally, passed on to him.

_“It is. Four thirteen, to be exact. The nights are getting longer now that it’s late winter.”_

“Mmm. It’s also getting very cold now that it’s late winter. I vote for staying warm.” Ennoshita rolls around to lie on his right and folds the blankets around his shoulders in emphasis. His eyelids cling shut with sleep, and he fights to keep off a yawn. “The bed is nice. Have you been in it lately?”

_“Yours is warmer than mine. I don’t like mine.”_

“It’s warm because I keep it warm. Your bed isn’t warm blooded, it’s not going to generate heat for you on its own.”

_“So… I was thinking… if I’m cold already, won’t you join me outside, Chikara? It’s such a beautiful night.”_

Ennoshita places his phone carefully, face down on his pillow, and groans into an armful of blankets to prevent her from hearing it.

_“Chikara?”_  Her volume dips to a dulcet hum, and Ennoshita, when he holds his phone to his ear again, can’t suppress the feathery shiver that laces his spine.  _“I’ll even do the driving this time. Is twenty minutes enough to get ready?”_

It wouldn’t take twenty to stay in his cocoon. He’d rather be with her right here, filling up the chilly space in his double bed with the warmth she hates to share, his down blanket sliding in-between their spaces, and her shallow breaths steady against his chest.

He dreams of it all in a single beat, before surrendering it to his memory for a better time, a chillier night.

“…Say my name again.”

_“Chikara.”_

“Mmmmm. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. What should I be wearing?”

_“Comfortable and warm. Maybe a really big coat?”_

“Big enough to fit you too, I see.”

_“…It’s not fun when you always know everything.”_

Ennoshita grins widely in his empty room. He nudges back the covers with a few wriggles of his toes and tries not to wince at the sudden invasion of icy air through the warm pockets in his clothing.

“I’m not fun? So, I don’t need to bring the jacket then.”

There’s silence on the other end, and this frequent game they play lingers in the quiet shuffles as they both meander around their rooms, getting ready. He’s never really mad at her, and she’s never without the upturn of her lips as she pretends to ignore him in a poor mimicry of other girls.

‘Proper girls’, she calls them, pointing them out like exhibitions, like examples to a question, as they occasionally pass them by. She’s always smiling good naturedly as she talks around them, but Ennoshita never eases his grip on her hand.

She suited his normal just fine; on alternative days his anomaly, and he picks out his thickest, widest coat in his wardrobe, enough to encase both their puzzle-piece irregularities from the blistering cold.

“Hey,” he murmurs into their silence, “I’m heading over now.”

She breathes once, twice, as if tasting the chill by scent.

_“Okay. I’ll be waiting outside.”_

He doesn’t suggest she keep herself warm indoors while she waits, not even when he slips his door closed behind him and gazes with a slack jaw at the flurry of snow drifting past.

It looks like a snow globe settling into its scenery after being tossed, the slivers of white blearing through the heavy late-night curtain with each streetlamp he passes by. He knows he’ll see her outside, a hand rested lightly on the railing by her front steps. She’d brave a blizzard, the bone settling weight of a winter night, all for the sensation of drowning underneath a sky of frosted rain.

The drive covers time in a daze, the repeat of houses and turns shuddering to a stop when he parks his car right by the only person outside at this time of night.

Ennoshita steps out of his car boldly. “For someone who’s bad with temperature, you’re too fascinated by it.” He makes his way past the hood of his car to open the side door for her to enter, whenever she wants. “You might catch a cold. C’mon.”

She grins at him, glowing the warmest haven on the street. “I won’t, not if you brought the jacket.”

“Even better, I have a car heater,” Ennoshita laughs. “Let’s talk about the snow once we’re out of it.”

For a second her face rests in a petulant reluctance, a child unwilling to walk away from massive puddles and piles of autumn leaves, but Ennoshita smiles at her the way only he does—with embers—and she slips her hand into his as if it had never left.

He waits for her to snap her seatbelt into place before dragging his jacket from the backseat and draping it over her shoulders, careful to tuck them in. From underneath it, she sneaks two searing warm-packs into his pockets for him.

“Now you’re warm.” She smiles, satisfied, and stretches into the seat. The only thing Ennoshita can actually see of her is her tousled hair and the oddly knitted cone-shaped beanie of hers. He debates asking her if her ears would be properly covered, but when she sinks further into his jacket, her nose pricking up the edge of the collar, he hides a smile and opts to save his worry for another time.

“Alright, my lady.” He shifts the gear into drive and releases the brake. He can feel her focus split between the soundless scenery outside and the way his fingers curl around the steering wheel. “Where are we headed?” And before she can answer, he adds, “-and if you say that you don’t know again this time, I’m going straight back home. With you in the car.”

“How risqué,” she teases, voice woolly from underneath the massive coat. “But we can’t be in the snow inside your bedroom. To the sea it is!”

It does cross Ennoshita’s mind that the sea in winter isn’t particularly festive—in fact, water’s the last thing you want to see when the point of snow was for it  _not_ to become water—but frankly, he’s been through a lot weirder. Visiting natural wonders at night still counts as miles better than wandering through empty department stores. No, he doesn’t want to remember that ever again.

Before he steps on the gas, he bends around just ever so slightly, and he spies her watching him with twinkling eyes.

Ennoshita keeps his peace, but he makes sure to start the car less smoothly than he usually would. When she jerks forwards in her seat, she bursts into poorly hidden snickers.

“I wasn’t laughing at you!”

“Unconvincing.” He grudgingly slows down for a left turn out of the residential area. “I know that little look in your eyes. Nothing good ever comes of it.”

“It’s just how I was born,” she huffs, “you can’t blame me for looking like I do.”

The stretch of his lips is incontestable; his heart liquefies into a cream concoction of sheer adoration and nostalgia, and Ennoshita wishes that he weren’t driving so that he could reach out for those hidden hands of hers and press them into his palms until they’re sharing pulses. Under the right light, in the right puff of steaming breath, he can pull her to him like their first time within footsteps of each other.

And although he’s a man of little sentimentality, his sentiments often radiate past his locus, and she pulls them from their shared distance and keeps them warm and hidden underneath her layer of mischief.

He wouldn’t be able find a single thing to blame her for even if he prayed for a day. Not even her late-night calls and even later night exploits to deserted places.

They both keep the music off between them, and she keeps her elbow pressed as close to him as possible, the steady thudding of the windshield wipers counting a beat to their rhythm. The drag of the wheels against the paved road smooths into a glide with the thickening layer of snow blanketing the empty ground, and as the interior temperature rises in increments from the heater, her breaths slowly level out and her eyes droop closed.

At a red light, Ennoshita reaches over and reclines her chair for her head to rest in the nook between the seat and the door’s edge.

In the silence, time shifts by in disguise, sunlight hidden and congregating shadows underneath the headlights betray nothing but the stretch of solitude to the way to the sea. Ennoshita keeps up a good speed, but the seconds tick and strikes a solid ‘five am’ by the time he manoeuvres into the parking lot, not another car in sight.

His hand hesitates once, twice, twice-and-a-half, before resting his fingertips against her cheek and skims his palm along the curve of her jaw. He catches her eyes shifting underneath her guise of sleep and decides to pinch her slightly behind the ear.

She squawks, a hand flying to the sore spot, and Ennoshita grins.

“It’s time to wake up. We’re here.”

“…Okay,” she dips underneath her makeshift blanket to hide a wide yawn. “Okay, let’s go.”

Ennoshita makes sure to catch his coat before it slides off her shoulders as she pulls her numb legs out of the car. “Are you warm enough without this?” He frowns when she nods. “Well, if you’re sure. I’ve got a second jacket in the back I can get for you if you’re not warm enough.”

“I’m  _fine_ ,” she pokes him in the side and tugs his wrist forwards when he shrinks away. “I’ve got four layers on!”

He takes her word for it, and he hopes that it’s enough, but even as he’s stumbling forwards in the dark towards an unknown destination, he keeps an eye on her padded frame, ready to possibly leap into action at any sign of a shiver.

Neither of them quite realized how silent it really was in the car until she approaches the ocean with him. They weave through several bicycle railings, and in the pitch blackness Ennoshita pinpoints the exact moment that his feet tread past concrete and onto powdered sand. The roaring sound of winter waves at stark temperatures pushing their way as far onto dry realm sounds monstrous in its solitude; no birds were out at this time of night, this time of year.

She raises her voice a little just to be heard above the indomitable crests, but it slips past earshot, and Ennoshita follows the direction of her hand and presses himself as closely to her as possible to catch her words.

“I couldn’t hear that, what did you say?”

“I said it’s a bit dark,” she half-turns into his chest and stretches on her tiptoes to reach his ear. “Do you want to turn on some light, or do you want to stay like this?”

Ennoshita takes some time to consider. “I’ve got an idea,” he says slowly. “But it might get our butts wet.”

A sound of rapid shuffling, and something plasticky presents itself too close to Ennoshita’s face. “Okay, let’s use my jacket,” she presses it into his nose, and he pries it from her grip with his free hand. “It’s waterproof.”

“And best hope your mom doesn’t find out you’ve been using it like this,” he laughs, but bends down to fan it out against the pillowed sand. This far out from stray footsteps, the deep layer of snow seamlessly disguises the texture of sand, even when pressed down to the wrist. “All done.”

He steadies his arm to support her slow descent, but she simply squeezes his hand tightly once, and slides into her space beside him blindly. Ennoshita huffs out a laugh but doesn’t offer an explanation when he feels her press her question against his shoulder. Aligned along each other’s sides, she’s close enough for Ennoshita to breathe in the faint musk of fresh laundry as her hair billows, the salt air stinging his nose in retaliation.

“Close your eyes,” he murmurs instead. Even if it doesn’t matter whether they’re open or shut; even when the darkness in front offers no quantifiable distance other than everything unknown painted over by black, no clearer than blind, than covered, than absent.

“It’s brighter behind your eyelids,” Ennoshita continues, low, deep, and rumbling by her ears. “You can feel the small touches of cold on your cheeks, melting on the crown of your head, and beyond the salt air, you can taste the fresh snowflakes dissolving on your lips.”

Stretching across her lap, he cradles her hand and guides it towards the bare ground. Her hand presses into the snow, his on top, touch firm yet tender. She doesn’t flinch. There isn’t a sound to hear, but he feels her muscles shift underneath guidance, movements confident and exhilarated; large chunks of snow trapped in her grip crumbles through her bare fingers, a husky crunching sound as she folds its remains around her touch.

When her fingers begin to lose feeling, she opens up and laughs.

Pain is likely unavoidable, with her poor resistant against extreme temperatures and even worse circulation, but the sensation of feeling nothing else but the piercing chill in one hand and Ennoshita’s immeasurable warmth in the other fills her with an elation that crowds the space between her heart and her ribs. Her nerves seem to have disappeared along with the rolling tide, and all that floats through her is an oceanside’s five a.m. indescribability.

“I’m everything but seeing it,” she exhales and the air in front of her moistens with the caress of her heat. “I think this is better. It’s cold, but it’s so much better.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Ennoshita asks with a smile. He doesn’t ask about the snow.

He feels her nod, heavy from the frigid wind.

“What if… what if, we’re with the water?”

“Like how?” He asks, his eyes closing alongside her.

“We aren’t sitting on sand.” Her words fall quiet, catching its ends in a hum. “We’re surrounded by water, the ocean. The waves you hear crashing on the shore are far behind us, reaching for something long gone. We’re alone, floating on patches of frozen blackness, swaying slowly to the lazy morning currents.”

Ennoshita lets her images wash over him behind closed eyes. The saltiness in the air bites, mingling with the fresh brushes of snow, and he gives it all up to the sea. Occasionally he’d hear a splash of a curious sea creature, wondering what they are, but nothing else is near except for each other’s steady breaths and the creasing of her spread jacket underneath their raw seats.

“You aren’t afraid of the open ocean?” Ennoshita whispers.

“I am, really,” she admits with humble laughter on her tongue, “who wouldn’t be in the face of such… vast possibility?”

“You’re being rather brave, then,” he says, smiling.

“Do you think so? I think it’s because… well, my fear only lasts a short while—maybe until I pull myself away—but here on our frozen island I can hold onto your hand for as long as you stay. You’re not going to let me lose my bearings if I anchor myself in you, will you?”

His next breath disappears when he reaches for it. “I- no, I won’t.”

“Okay.” She says it like it’s nothing. “Then I’m not afraid of the open ocean.’

Ennoshita wants someone to answer him right there and then: where could he even find the words to answer such sentiment? The dozen options in his mind fade before they can crystalize in his mouth, and all fails him.

Well, words, sounds, strings of meanings to be spoken. Ennoshita falls to whatever his limbs call. He pulls her into him, eyes firmly closed with moisture pooling behind them. He draws his jacket around her shoulders as she’d said, and his arms curl her into his shivering chest as closely as his heart will allow. Although anything past his knees have longed grown numb from the freezing cold, his heart feels like it’s stopped pounding and simply decided to clench itself around his lungs, dizzying his mind.

Ennoshita wonders. He wonders if one day, he’ll be able to find a way of telling her how much she’s odd and how much he can’t help but love her, without crying.

There are no clocks holding them down tonight, and they measure their time by each other’s touch; she holds him back, fingers gripping pale in his coat, with no words exchanged. She understands. And like so, with their eyes closed and a thousand thoughts passing through their fingertips, they sit awhile; their legs are crossed; another night in remarkable situations elapses.

“Hey,” she murmurs where her lips graze against Ennoshita’s mild pulse. He squeezes her once in response. “Want to get back home before sunrise?”

“Mmmm.”

“Mmmm,” she mimics, laughing mutedly, “is that a yes?”

“I’m thinking,” he grumbles into her hair.

She rubs her nose further into his sweater and smiles. “Okay.”

Ennoshita can’t guess the counting minutes whirring past, not in the darkness, and the moments they have left before the sun peeks itself past the horizon flows by messily. However, he knows that when it does—when the gulls begin to call—there’s a whole day of reality waiting for his return at the other end of the highway.

His familiar routine, familiar faces, and bowls of familiar soup that’ll battle in vain against his perpetually numb hands from the night.

“Let’s stay like this a little longer.”

She runs her fingers down his back, and the other through his windswept bangs. Ennoshita feels her heartbeat accelerate through her woollen jacket.

“I like the sound of that.”

 

* * *

 

He woke, startled harshly out from sleep by a set of fists pounding against his front door. They hammered sharply in a short rhythm before pausing almost as if for breath, and then resumed their relentless rapping. In his misted mind with tiredness not yet fully brushed aside,  **Kuroo** wondered for a moment if lashing those hands outside his door together and hanging them upside down in the parlour would return him his peace.

They danced another loud, unwelcome tune as he entertained those thoughts as one prays for wealth—unsuccessful and met with no change. Kuroo heaved his slumped torso off the ledge of his sheep-wool mat and made his way down the dusty steps to wrestle open the door. There she stood, readily dressed and her expression bright against the sleeping city behind her.

“I’m tired,” he welcomed his guest acerbically.

She only beamed, a little sleepily with a warm daze hovering behind a soft face. “As am I! What a coincidence.”

Kuroo scowled. It was far too early for anyone to harbour any hope for gentleness in him.

“Is it?” He grumbled. “Would you like to knock harder and ask my mother when she comes downstairs, hunting furiously for the disruption, if it is due to coincidence that she too is exhausted?”

“This is precisely why I’ve come over, Kuroo,” she chortled, “to cure that dour old soul of yours.”

“Sleep does the job better, I daresay. Go home.”

Instantly, she slipped her foot into the gap between the door and its frame, wedging it from shutting. The motion was far too quick for Kuroo to catch effectively, and his downturned lips pressed tighter together when he realized she made it with barely any effort at all.

She tilted her head at him. “Well, I believe in you,” she said. “I must say, you weren’t so grumpy the last time I came searching for you!”

Kuroo squinted at the colour of the sky before muttering. “Last time was a lot earlier than this. Why, you came two hours before dawn today.”

“The fishermen have already headed for the docks at this time.”

She bravely ignored his expression, ‘do-I-look-like-a-fisherman-to-you’ paraded across his twisted frown. Kuroo knew she was waiting for him to break as she always does, for a crack of weakness to split his foul mood, and her smile never faltered from its scaffold.

“I promise it’ll make your morning worthwhile. I  _promise_.”

“Do I seem that weak to you? So easily defeated?”

“Weak enough to be beaten by an early rise,” she answered him sweetly. He scowled deeper at the baseless amusement than ran through her words like fresh honey. “Mother did say it was good for your health.”

“Is that so? Is she awake, then?”

“ _I promise_.”

He felt a deep ache of annoyance that had long faded into a dull numbness whenever she took it upon herself to exact these cruel and unusual punishments, but her double-edged smile against a slow dawn seemed to rob him of all his rational thinking. All the while, she counted her breaths patiently with one foot in the door, and fingers that curled into themselves from the morning chill.

Kuroo sighed a second time, this one heavier than the last, and clicked his tongue as disapprovingly as he could.

“…I’ll get dressed.” He looked at her sharply. “You’ll stay exactly where you are.”

“As you say,” she answered with ease, and watched him stumble his way back up the stairs with an arm propping her weight up against the aged door frame.

Unsure of their destination, or any part of her plan at all, he sifted through his chest of clothes that more or less looked the same and served their purpose well. There were a few items that his elder brother had left behind for him after he had gone to one of the larger ports in the archipelago to serve under a minor lord, and they all wrapped tightly around Kuroo’s chest and arms, hardened from work amongst the forest.

Although the weather was supposedly turning aside from a lengthy winter, he brought his brother’s wolf pelt cloak to err on the side of caution. It was yet, after all, a lightless hour, and he was heading into the unknown.

She was exactly as she had agreed to remain when he returned to the open door with his clothes and a pack containing cheese from the evening before, a good half a dozen apples and a freshly baked loaf of bread.

Her eyes roamed over his attire approvingly, and beckoned eagerly with a hand once she’d decided that their breakfast pack was sufficient. “Let’s be off, then.”

“And where, pray tell, are we off to?” Kuroo asked, planting each step with care as the paved stones were slippery from the morning dew. Ahead of him, she leapt nimbly across drains and steps alike, unburdened with such weight.

“At the moment, we’re heading for the docks.”

“Off the island?”

“Off the island,” she nodded. “We can use  _Feywind_.”

Kuroo snorted at that, conjuring the images of all the potential consequences of that option. “’Can use’? Easier to believe if you said you’d simply taken it upon yourself to commandeer it.”

“Bah,” she laughed lightly, careful of her own echoes bouncing off sleeping walls at this time of day. “It’s barely a large enough boat for five. How could one possibly ‘commandeer’ such a puny little thing? I’m simply borrowing it.”

“Then let’s hope that your brother doesn’t choose today of all days to tackle an early morn.”

“When does he ever? He’s almost gotten in trouble twice with one of the Masters on the Isle for oversleeping. He’ll hardly do any better back here with mother’s evening fire still burning.”

They approached the docks, almost empty of people at this in-between hour. As she had said, almost all the fishermen had taken off to the wider seas earlier than they to follow the fish trails, and any shopkeeper or trader still rolled around in their beds, sinking further into their soundly dreams.

A street length’s west of the shore where a much longer pier jutted outwards into the opaque waters was where all the private owned boats had been leashed.  _Feywind_ slept in its usual spot near the very end of the pier, bobbing up and down with the gentle early breeze.

Neither of them was a stranger to sailing, nor were they strangers to  _Feywind_.  The straight forward path they trod soundlessly over was one that felt familiar underneath their weather-worn boots, and one that she could navigate in her dreams and back out without cracking an eye open. Kuroo followed her obediently, his pack strapped diagonally across his broad shoulders and his heels sinking far into the fine waves of sand from his weight. She hopped over and about onto the sturdy boat in a few nimble steps, and held out a hand to assist with their makeshift luggage. Kuroo tossed the pack over to her and the boat dipped drastically as he dropped onto its stern.

“Hopefully, we might not have to row as much as we might if the winds are kindly upon us today.” She bustled around fixing and sorting the mess that always inevitably remained after her brother’s voyages. “We won’t have any magewind to assist us either way.”

Kuroo unwound the rope’s final loop around its bollard and let it fall into a small heap beside his feet. “I suppose I can guess why you decided to bring me along.”

There was not a trace of shame in her ear-splitting grin. “Consider it an advantage of our partnership. If you were absent, I would’ve seen dismally little of everywhere, and without my ideas, you’d probably have spent half your life either lounging about in front of the hearth or being trapped in the barracks with the rest of your stocky friends.”

They made themselves comfortable on opposite ends of  _Feywind_ , and with his back rested solidly against the stern, Kuroo met her gaze with his. “You sound in the opinion that ‘stocky’ is a bad thing.” He picked up both oars, each in one hand, and tossed them up in his palm. “Would you like to correct that?”

Her eyes blazed with challenge, but her mouth was soft in a crescent. “Not at all. We head north-east, and we’ll see how you fare before I reconsider my opinions.”

“And I suppose that’s all the notice I’ll be given to proceed with my duties,” Kuroo said, laughing. “Alright, I suppose I’ll do as I’m bid.”

With her at the prow and Kuroo’s swift and powerful strokes, they sprung out of the harbour almost as if a fire were at their tails.

Dawn had not yet broken, and the clouds in the sky were sparse, cloaking only its corners and all the stars still visible had escaped from any veil, shining as brightly as they could against the growing light. It was just as well that they did not need them for navigation this time, for their rusty old compass had been found underneath one of the storage planks, and she had laid it out in front of her although she gave it little regard. They had travelled, both alone and together, too much along the open seas for them to lose their way. No land ahead was visible from their trail against the coast, but Kuroo too knew the landscape by heart. He could watch the shore slip away underneath their boat and slide out into a seeping navy, until all flooded black in the fringes of the deep sea, all the while knowing which next island they faced.

And in the simmering royal blue horizon, the stillness of the water weaved together the boundaries of sea and sky. If it were any darker, it would’ve been impossible to tell on which they were sailing on. Yet, they continued.

A quarter of an hour in, she shifted in her seat, breaking the spell that seemed to be cast on them from the utter silence of the open waters.

She turned to half face Kuroo. Her expression was set in a wistful, almost dream like trance, and when she spoke, her voice seemed to be finding its way through a fog in another world. “They say that there is where the great Lord and Lady of the first songs were wed. When the world was still connected with each other, and when the little island could still be reached by pilgrimage.”

And Kuroo knew of what she spoke, and thus realized their destination.

“In the songs, perhaps,” he said. “But they teach on the Isle that they were wed in lavish ceremony in the capital. It seems that wasn’t enough for legend to sing songs of.”

“It  _is_  a lot less romantic. Even if it was in a castle.”

“The truth isn’t always romantic,” he replied swiftly, but she only shook her head with her mane of hair rustling in the world’s wind behind her. She smiled in silence at something Kuroo couldn’t quite see. He kept his own silence then, not discouraged, but pondering at her words, and at the image in his mind of a lady whose beauty gleamed beyond compare, and her lord’s hand gently pressing it against his lips in reverence.

“Would you sing?” He finally spoke. “The first songs about the lady and her lord. I would, but I cannot recall all the words.”

So she did, as if prepared. Her voice was unpolished, but it rang clear and true in the lull of the bare waters, and the words called themselves into the air from where her voice had been previously lost—wherever that illusive realm might once have been.

Almost as if her song was the catalyst, their journey bore fruit as they caught sight of their destination growing against the horizon. Her voice strengthened with its appearance, and with it the island grew closer and larger with each powerful stroke of the oars. Kuroo kept the pace with the tune of the melodic tale, his arms pulsing with effort as he sped up with the climax and slowed his movements as her voice slowly faded nearing the end of the song.

It had taken a laborious half hour, but they had arrived. Kuroo rowed  _Feywind_  ahead until he felt her belly scrape ever so gently against the powdered shore, its granules glittering lilac in the dimness, and sprang out into the shallow water to push her further up.

Kuroo turned back after slinging their packs back over his shoulders to wake her up from her dream with a soft whisper of her name against her ear.

“We’re here,” he told her gently, and smiled when she took his proffered hand out of the boat. He could feel her awe and eagerness jumping against his palm, but she remained close to his side, her fingers tightening through his rougher ones.

The trees weaved canopies above their heads with their taut branches, and while the sand fell either lilac or mauve as they changed their perspectives, the trees were a solitary colour no matter the angle. They glowed like ivory lamps for the lost and weary, emanating temperate silver rays over the passage that pulled backwards for its travellers as they approached the edge of the forest with anticipation.

For this was  _Ingis_ , the moving island, the grove of silver, where the fountain that lay at its heart, and the small stream that began and ended at nowhere, were all of silver hue. The fruit from the trees were too far for man to reach, and they sparkled like starlight above the clear, well-trodden paths that all lead to one destination only.

It was oft spoken of in song and stories shared across the fire on wintery nights, but few who ever searched for it ever found it. All intrepid explorers failed in their missions. And, all those who did not seek it, caught glimpses of it on their journeys elsewhere, but they rarely paid any heed to its faint shadow.

Kuroo did not know through what method she had attained knowledge of its location without happening across it, but he did not ask. He simply followed and watched her gaze roam from one tree to the next, lingering on the flora that curled itself like bangles along the vast trunks and roots that seemed to sink into the very depths of the world. She led him on ahead with her hand tied to his, and their footsteps made no sound against the soft forest floor.

Although the island by sight appeared to be a small one, the paths meandered for a while, and Kuroo found himself lost of any sense of direction, north, east, or west. Still, his feet paced surely ahead of his mind, called without voice towards a purpose, a location unmapped. She was as lost as he, and yet her eyes seemed to clear as they wandered further and further into this dream, and until all was the same, their bodies, their hearts, and their surroundings all woven out of legend.

They both slowed as the tug on their minds began to ease, and they entered the clearing. This was the heart of the island, of  _Ingis_ , where before years had been counted, all the great stories congregated around.

This was the island of old princes, princesses, heroes, and magic. When the world was at its infancy, and where all was great and magnificent.

Kuroo allowed himself to be tugged down onto the soft ground, beside where she sat cross-legged and smiling at him with the lightness of the fey. She held a golden fruit in her hand, and she offered it to him. He took it, and the first bite soaked his tongue with a transparent sweetness. If one could eat stained glass, that would be what this fruit was crafted of.

“These must be the  _ilna,_ the golden, low-hanging fruits that replenish one’s soul.” She rubbed her thumb carefully against its delicate peel. “They say, in the songs, that these could exacerbate healing for any ailment.”

“It’s only a fruit,” Kuroo spoke slowly. “But it would be wonderful if they really could. I do imagine that’s what an omnipotent fruit would taste like, if it was.”

She raised her head to watch his thoughts across his face. “It does taste of something that should no longer exist. A strong, yet forgotten hope.”

“It makes me feel lighter and older at the same time,” Kuroo chuckled. He let his own gaze fall onto hers and their smiles stretched together. “This whole place does.”

She hummed a note in agreement, and the sound reverberated deep through the air.

“It’s as if I could close my eyes, and reopen them to discover that I was a heroine, simply asleep for the ages passed.”

At this, he laughed widely. A hint of cheekiness returned into his eyes, clearing his daydreams for a while. “If anyone could be a heroine, it would be you.”

“I might not be strong enough, but I’m definitely stubborn enough to be!”

“Being aware of one’s own nature must be another virtue this place bestows.” He only grinned wider when she slapped him lightly on his arm for the comment.

“If that were the case,” she replied with a huff, “I certainly have several people in mind who would do quite well with a journey here.”

“Bring them here, to this place of wonder? Would that be quite wise?”

Her smile was knowing. “Perhaps you have a point.”

And there was no certainty, no clue whether or not they would ever come across  _Ingis_  again in their lifetime. This was a blessing by luck, and that seemed to dawn on the both of them as they put their ungenerous thoughts out of their mind.

Here, nothing felt very real, yet everything they experienced all at once with each of their senses awoken. They rested against the bark of several clustered trees, and faced the inner sanctum of the island in peace. There was nothing that they were forbidden to touch, to experience, not even the crystal fountain that had been carved into a low rock face, giving it the illusion of growing out of the landscape. The stream ran strong and sweet in a half crescent shape, and the grass that flourished around it was a light green that neither of them had ever found on even the most luxurious fabric.

However, Kuroo didn’t dare swim in the running stream, nor clean his face in the pool of mirrors, no matter how much they beckoned him in. The fear of staining it with his unworthiness, in the face of all the mighty and awesome that had left their mark on this hallowed land, was sharp enough to detain him from any unnecessary action. She too, seeing his reserve and resolve, followed his example. The only things they partook in were the silk flowers, the smooth bark and the glistening fruit that hung kindly beside their small, tired bodies almost as a gift for its pilgrims. Even when they finished their fruits, they buried the cores back into the earth and covered it neatly with moist soil in return.

They sat soundly in their places, and lost themselves in murmured conversation about everything, anything. Their quiet speech was infused by the grove even without their awareness, and their voices lingered with a tuneless melody that the stream chimed in its movements. Kuroo basked in the silver light that seemed to invigorate his mind, healing all the exhaustion that had settled into his thoughts the past few weeks. Her laughter too seemed to come easier, brighter, and he glowed when the lines by her eyes blossomed into genuine joy, a joy that he had missed in either of them since the beginning of their acquaintance.

They discussed the fountains, the glass, their homes, their families, their passions, their wishes, their regrets. All words slipped from their lips effortlessly in all the right words, and when he laughed, she laughed along, infected by his cheer. When she drew up memories and thoughts that ached within her, they came all the more vividly, and he pulled her closer to him, brushing away her tears against his chest whilst his flowed freely with hers.

All things came brighter, stronger and easier that morning. Pain was sharper, suffering was blunter, beauty was more radiant, and happiness blazed trails in the dazzling air. There was hope, hope that lasted past the week and beyond, into years that they thought had lost themselves in the fog of uncertainty.

And he loved her, loved her more than he ever had, more than his heart could hold, and more than any story could tell. His hands trembled as he tilted her face up to his, and he kissed into her what he could no longer contain within his bursting seams.

When they parted, they wondered if this was the secret to legend, to heroism, to lore—that everything was larger, everything was more, and the world and their hearts were rich with feeling before it had all seeped away into the passing of time. This, they realized, this was the size of love that empires could crumble for.

But like all the glorious days of old, the sun began to rise on their steady hours. The dawn both Kuroo and she had forgotten crept up on them from behind the dense, glittering forest, and soon the stream began to flash in the rich oranges of a changing horizon. Silver was mixed with golden rays that pierced through the gaps of the grove, and they both felt in their bones that it was almost time for the island to move on.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Kuroo murmured, but his voice cut through the quiet like an arrow. Her eyes were redder than when they had arrived, but they glinted brighter with passion. “We can stay longer, if you need a while yet.”

She shook her head. “No, it would be ill-mannered of us to outstay our welcome.”

Neither of them had remembered to touch their pack of food at all, and now that Kuroo lifted it up into the crook of his arm, he reached out and plucked two last golden fruits from their stems and folded it up carefully next to the apples. “For memory’s sake,” he winked.

The path out of the grove shortened as the island’s time there trickled down. Its way was no longer winding, and Kuroo caught sight of the shore, and their boat safety resting on its side, in no time at all.

He handed their breakfast pack to her for her to stow. “Hop on,” he instructed, and pushed them out back into the water before climbing on himself.

Although their sailing to  _Ingis_  had taken them a good half hour to reach its shores, it took them only a quarter of that for the island to slip further and further away behind them until it was only a speck against the breaking sun. Kuroo kept his gaze forwards, towards where they should be headed, and she, sat next to him on their return, leaned into him and followed his direction. Soon, the island had completely fallen away, and all that surrounded them was water, sea and the faint lapping of waves against the  _Feywind_ ’s sturdy hull.

He felt her urge to speak before she made a sound.

“I love you.” She professed. The words left her in a rush, a sudden collapse of energy within her, but there was yet a thrum of power through it. It was not a weak profession. A power from the grove that had not yet departed her, and perhaps never will, for that is the gift to those who reach its heart. “I love you. Beyond what words I know, or the songs I can sing.”

Kuroo, his body originally tense from the strain of rowing, unwound and he broke into an earnest smile that had not yet become unfamiliar on his face. He turned to look at her beside his shoulder’s height, and saw her impassioned look and also the uncertainty underneath it.

He gave her hand a firm squeeze before standing up to reach for the boat’s sail. He tugged it down and folded it carefully against the mast.

“Let’s rest here awhile,” he suggests, the same smile comforting her sudden puzzlement. “I don’t think I can quite pull my heart away from the grove just yet, not when I know I can only return with you in my dreams.”

Somewhere in the back of her thoughts, she recalled that her brother wouldn’t be much pleased if he had chosen to set sail past dawn, but there no choice was given her when she saw with warm cheeks Kuroo looking at her like the sunrise itself. He waited for her response with a patient fondness that pained her in a poignant pang against her lungs.

“Yes,” she answered as the word formed on her lips.

Kuroo’s smile warmed, and he retook his seat beside her. There was a disquiet that thrummed in her ever since they sailed further and further from the silver grove, and Kuroo caught her hand in his. “Would you like to like down?” He asked soothingly, and she did so without his question even finished.

They sat like so, counting neither seconds, breaths or the clouds in the rust sky. The boat swayed gently against the rocking sea, lulling them into a companionable tranquillity with nobody else but them. His fingers found their way naturally into her hair, combing through it softly against her scalp.

As he was about to doze off in the warming sunlight with her head in his lap, she reached up and threaded her fingers through his own unruly hair. “Will you come with me still,” she asked very quietly, “if I ask it of you again?”

“Always,” Kuroo answered, voice heavy with a wave of sleep and affection. “Always.”


	77. "I'm used to being rejected" with Iwaizumi, Oikawa, Kuroo and Akiteru

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by naobaes:
>
>>   
> crawls in here to wish you well! don't forget to take care of yourself first and foremost, alright? also, can i make a teeny tiny request where iwaizumi, oikawa, kuroo and akiteru (if you write him) react to their s/o acting all fine and dandy even after being neglected for a while and getting stood up on their date and goes "it's fine. i'm used to being neglected/forgotten already so no need to worry" or something along that line? thank you so much! (also i hope this made sense welp)  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Forty thousand, five hundred and seventy two years later, I deliver. @naobaes, I am so sorry. So sorry, I tell you. I hope you’re doing alright lately, even if I’ve been dreadful and literally fallen off the face of the earth without a word._
> 
> _It’s been a while since I’ve written as casually as I used to, so I hope the transition isn’t too weird; it feels a little bit like copying my own writing, only more natural. Anyway, I hope it’s what you wanted to read, and I’m still sorry._

It’s a rainy afternoon—exactly the type of weather that you feel a little lighter in—and the coffee store is flooded with customers. It’s a small place with average coffee that’s watered down to conserve resources, so to speak, but there are booths woven out of magic and myth in hidden corners, and carpets plucked straight from the caverns of Agrabah. The one second to the right, squeezed in-between a wide window and a rickety bookshelf, is your usual spot.

Your, plural. You take the empty seat that isn’t yours this afternoon and pull your knees up to your chest.

Once an uncomfortable crick in your neck alerts you that it’s been a good three hours since you first sat down, three textbooks fanned out on the table, and you’ve only gotten through the first chapter of each. It’s not going too well; the pitter patter of rain is distracting, and the soles of your feet are chilly from the breeze that blows in with each person that pushes past the glass doors.

 _[Two minutes]_ , your unlocked phone reads, [ _two minutes and I’ll be there]._

_[I’m really sorry.]_

That was five minutes ago, when  **Iwaizumi** , the man who usually occupies the small dent in the leather that you’re tucked into right now, had finally deigned to reply to your fifteen text messages.

You hadn’t bothered to leave, and calling him wouldn’t make much of a difference if his text tone went otherwise unnoticed. The read receipts, at least, showed that the app hadn’t been opened. You’re ironically grateful for small mercies.

A particularly violent gust of humid air whooshes into the shop and several patrons gasp audibly as their pant legs take the brunt of the moisture.

“Shit.” It’s the first thing you hear before a massive shadow looms over your textbook. Water drips onto the pages in audible plops. “Hey, I got held back by practice and I left my phone in my locker—you’re… sitting in my chair.”

You flip the page. “Yup.”

Iwaizumi’s soaked to the skin, and he climbs into the seat opposite you—your seat—and leans forwards on his elbows. He’s frowning at you, and you don’t have to look up to picture the stern press of his jaws together whenever there’s something wrong that he can’t fix. “You never sit in my chair.” He cards a hand callously through his sopping fringe. “I’m really, so damn sorry that I forgot.”

“It’s alright,” you tell him with a smile. It’s a very small one, not to mention it’s directed at the book. Iwaizumi doesn’t buy it.

“Is it? Really? I didn’t think you would be here still, but it’s just a study date—wait.” He shakes his head like a dog, and blinks forcefully several times. “That’s not what I meant. It’s not  _just_ a study date. I should have remembered. No excuses.”

“I’m really, really fine, Hajime,” you insist. He leans across the small table and tucks two fingers underneath your chin. You’re barely ready when he pushes your face up, ever so gently, to meet his eyes. “Will you believe me if I look at you properly?”

His fingers curl along the softness of your neck, but he doesn’t let go. “I’ll think about it. Like I said, you’re never in my seat. So, it’s something big.”

“It’s raining,” you point out, “and this is the seat further away from all the water.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t blink. It’s the world’s most heart wrenching interrogation, and you’re weak. “I’m used to being left by my own, anyway,” you add. “Don’t think this is the first time that I’ve been stood up.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Iwaizumi bristles, his blunt nails scraping the underside of your jaw involuntarily, and he parks his other hand on top of the desk. His fingers crumple half of your page, and the crinkling noise blends in with the hubbub in the background.

“So you know that it feels like crap,” he states more than asks. “Why are you trying to brush it off?”

“I’m-”

“Either you’re lying,” he interrupts firmly, “or you think far too little of yourself.”

You feel something hit you in your chest, and you tug your face away from his grip. His knuckles clench in mid-air, but he doesn’t resist. He rests both hands down and leans into your space. “Which is it?” He repeats.

“Probably-” Your voice twists in the middle. “-Probably the latter. I’m really not mad. I promise. Hajime.”

There are a few tense seconds, and then Iwaizumi deflates. He glances down apologetically at your mangled textbook and smooths it out with a thumb. “I can’t believe I’m angry for you.”

You laugh weakly. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”

He shoots you a sharp look, but there’s an exasperated edge to his half-frown. “Stop that. You need to value yourself more.”

“Very easy for you to say. I’ve sat here for the past three hours, alone. Do you know how many couples came through that door and ordered about five dozen different skinny low-sweet mocha frappes?”

Iwaizumi snorts. “Do you want matching drinks?”

“No-”

“Too late.” He’s pushed himself upright, wallet in hand. He’s smiling, even if he does look a little angry still. “We’re getting hot drinks, and after that I’m going to drag you around the city until you forget about the dumb frappes.”

“What about the studying?” You protest. “What was the point?”

Iwaizumi shrugs with a full grin. He’s always in a better mood when he’s dragging you away from being diligent. It’s a bad habit he’s picked up from Oikawa and has never really managed to break. “Sucks to be you.”

He walks away, chortling to himself, and you sink back into your seat. Hajime’s seat. Sometimes, you admit, it does suck, but somehow he always manages to spin it right around until it’s bearable enough that you’re comfortable settling into a sofa that doesn’t belong to you, knees tucked up against your chest and waiting for a loved one to bring you a pink, fluffy drink–just to see him smile.

 

* * *

 

“Who the hell did this to you before?”

 **Oikawa's**  voice echoes through your house, and you briefly catch your mom pause in her cooking before continuing with a lower fan setting. You look away from the crack in your door, and stare at Oikawa, unimpressed.

“Why does it matter? You did it to me today.”

His face falls- only for a brief second- before it’s covered by something that resembles indignance. With a trembling lower lip. You’re not sure if he’s the one upset, or if he’s angry at you not being upset.

Which isn’t completely true. You  _were_  upset, and who wouldn’t be? But he should stop taking you for such a petty person. It was only a two hour wait, nothing close to your record time. It’s not a time you’re particularly proud of.

“I… I’m sorry, alright? I said I was sorry. I didn’t mean to oversleep.”

“Our date was for two pm, Tooru,” you say amusedly, “you can’t have overslept for that long.”

“Well- I-” He’s doing the stress-brush thing with his hair. It’s a mix of brushing it and curling the ends of his locks around his index finger to make it even bouncier. At this rate, he’ll look like a hedgehog in no time. “I overslept and- you know I’m not really good at mornings. I just  _do_  things, and I totally forgot until…” he trails off, an angry flush on his cheeks. He’s really not allowed to be bashful when he’s in the wrong.

“Until what?”

“Until Issei called me…”

“Oh, so you called Issei and not me?”

If it was possible to get any redder, Oikawa would. “I called you right after, didn’t I?!”

You huff a laugh. “You did, you did.”

“Well, he kind of shouted at me. To get offline. To, uh, get off my ass for my date.”

“And that’s how you found out that you have a date.”

“…Pretty much.” Oikawa lurches onto the bed, arms around either side of you and bore into your soul, searching for any traces of anger. “I’m really sorry. Really. Really, really. I won’t do it again, I promise.”

That combined with his whine, you roll your eyes at him. “Don’t make promises you’re obviously not going to keep.”

Oikawa flinches slightly, and your smirk falls drops off your face. He sits back on his calves, further away from you yet still a good head taller. Your crossed legs are beginning to pinch.

“Do you really think that of me?” He sounds miserable. “Was today really that bad?”

“No,” you murmur. You uncross your arms and press lightly against the back of his hand. “It wasn’t that bad. I’m sorry I was mean.”

For a moment, you expect him to brighten up and beam, or at least, pout, but Oikawa doesn’t. His head raises itself in increments, and his brows are pushed together in a confused frown.

“Why wasn’t it that bad?” He asks lowly. His voice is serious—his captain voice, the voice he used to ask you out, or to comfort you that one night you ran out to the riverside and refused to return home. “If it were me, I would’ve felt like shit. You waited for two whole hours.”

You press a little harder against his hand. “It was just time. Believe me, I’ve waited for longer with less to do.”

“What do you mean by that?” He scowls. “Are you talking about the other times you got stood up?”

You try to shrug as lightly as you can. “My record was five hours. I was twiddling my thumbs in a short dress. Really, today wasn’t so bad.”

“Then you should be mad.” Oikawa sounds wounded beyond belief. He flips his hand over in one swift motion and links his fingers through yours. It hurts. “I’m not—I’m not treating you like a possession or something, but I’m seriously pissed off that someone would do that to you. Of all people.”

Now he was just making it far too easy to take pot-shots.

“Well,” you say softly, and Oikawa glances up from underneath his lashes at your tone. “We all make mistakes sometimes, don’t we?”

You can almost see the strain on his soul as he tries not to roll his eyes. Still, his lips are quirked up. “Are you going soft? You didn’t take that shot at me?”

“I was trying to be nice, dumbass.” You laugh and smack his arm. He yelps. “And I mean it. Sure, I can be infinitely petty about it and make you carry my bags for a week, but I’m not that sort of person.” You pause, and Oikawa pushes forwards as if sensing weakness. “Or at least,” you mumble, “I hope I’m not. I try not to be. Dunno if it works.”

“It works,” he answers you briskly. Perhaps he notices the way you jerk back at his tone, but his eyes soften, and he clears his throat quietly to rid it of its coarseness. “I mean, you’re still here. You let me in the house. A lot better than what I’d do, probably.”

Your lips curl up into an unwilling smile at that. “Are you still Tooru? Did you take some pill of acute self-awareness this morning before you left?”

“Oh, shut up,” he grumbles, frowning. “That teaches me to say anything like that ever again.”

“Don’t.” You hope you don’t sound too pleading. “It helps. Thanks.”

Oikawa bobs his head slowly in a nod, almost as if slightly confused as to what exactly he was nodding about but agreeing with you has yet to lead him astray. Or—to put it plainly—agreeing with one’s girlfriend is always a great deal safer than disagreeing with one’s girlfriend. You notice, of course, but you let it go unmentioned with a knowing smile tucked underneath the corners of your lips.

You push yourself up and off the bed with a hand. Oikawa reaches out for you reflexively, likely to hold you back closer, and you take it with your other hand. His fingers lace through yours with an ease that comes with daily practice, and you jerk him to his feet beside you.

“I’m not done, though,” says Oikawa. He squeezes your hand firmly in case you’ve slipped out of the conversation without him noticing. You look up at him, and you’re surprised to see him a lot more troubled than his words sounded.

“Tooru,” you murmur softly, as if soothing a wounded bird, “it’s really nothing. I gave you a bit of a hard time over it already, so won’t you call it a draw?”

His frown deepens. “You’re wrong if you think if you think that I’m fine with just ‘not losing’. This isn’t something like that.”

“Then what is it?”

“You. Me being an ass, and then you being  _too used to_   _assery_.”

“I don’t think that’s a word.”

Ah. The ‘captain’ look. Your stubbornness withers underneath his impassable not-impressed face.

“Okay, okay.” You chew at the inside of a cheek, feeling pretty guilty. Maybe you do owe him this, and pushing someone’s care away—that’s not something you’d be proud of afterwards, you know that. “I’ll… I need some time. I think my mom’s making dinner downstairs, and-” you break off mid-sentence to check his expression, and Oikawa looks like he’s suffering through silence. “We can come back up after. We can talk then. Is that okay?”

He nods, and slowly melts back into the whiny kid he’s most comfortable being with you around. “You’ll answer my questions then?”

“Yes.”

“With the truth?”

“ _Yes._ ” He rolls his eyes, but you catch him easing into a smile.

“Good.” He’s the one who tugs at your hand this time and you let him. “Let’s go. Thank god you eat fast.”

 

* * *

 

It’s really not much of a surprise for you to find  **Akiteru**  nearer to tears than you are. He’s almost always living on the edge—of either beaming or blubbering, and when you can’t stop the tiny laugh that sneaks out, Akiteru immediately looks even more upset.

You hold your hands out, which he takes into his almost immediately.

“Don’t cry, Aki,” you say for the fourth time this afternoon. “It’s okay! I’m okay! We’re okay!”

“You keep saying that,” he almost whines. It’s quite a sight, with his red-rimmed eyes and blotchy face, even if he’s as impeccably styled and dressed as usual. It’s like someone switched the cool looking man with a kid that’s lost his parents in the supermarket.

You’d tell him that it was cute, but that would probably make him even more exasperated. Which would make you more exasperated. And maybe there’ll be a small combustion in the park on this uneventful evening and when the cops come they’ll find two bodies facing each other, wearing suspiciously constipated expressions.

“I—I’m not just, y’know, being like this. Like usual.” He sniffs forcefully and barks out a brief laugh. “I mean, this isn’t post-Titanic tears. It’s serious.”

Still, he manages to pull the serious out of the both of you and you sober up. He’s right, he’s not usually like this. There’s a frustration that lingers in the way he grips your palms that he’s not talking about—that you haven’t asked about.

“I’m really alright,” you repeat, this time lower and more earnestly. “You know I’m not the type of person to be bothered by this.”

“Aren’t you?” Akiteru, even when holding back tears, still manages to do his looming-over-you thing without trying. “Why aren’t you?”

You blink. “Should I be?”

“Yeah. You really should.  I know I’m the one always on the verge of tears but you—you’re never upset by things that should upset you. That you have every reason to be upset by.”

“I—what do you want me to say?” Luckily that doesn’t sound as accusatory as it could have. Akiteru still keeps his hands firmly wrapped around yours, and peers at you with that watery gaze. He knows far too much, even if he’s always wearing it on his sleeve. “I’m—I never wanted to be that sort of person who’d get mad at personal space and time apart. Is that what you want?”

“No.” He takes the time to wrap his tongue around the right words before saying them. “Okay, can I tell you what I feel? About not making it this afternoon to our date?”

You soften. “Of course you can.”

He sucks in a deep breath before launching right in.

“I felt really bad about missing it. It was terrible because this is our third reschedule, and I know that you’re as busy as I am, but you still made it. I’m angry because work keeps on calling me back on short notice, and I don’t believe that I should sacrifice time with you because my boss is short-sighted. I’m also upset because—because we haven’t been able to spend much time together at all lately. It’s been almost two months since we’ve had time to sit down and talk, and I  _care_ about how you’ve been doing lately. I want to ask, but it’s never the right way if it’s on the phone.

“And do you know what makes me the most upset? Why I’m crying like the idiot I am? Because you’re not—wait, let me rephrase that—because I know you, and I know you’re easily affected by imagining things about other people, and I know that you’re upset, but you won’t let it show. Because you want to be a good person, you want me not to worry.”

Akiteru stops just long enough to release a hand and reaches up to tug your chin back to face him. His eyes are dryer now, and they’re clear enough to bore right through you. “And what really, really hurts me, is that you’ve become too good at it. I don’t know if it’s because of me, or—”

“—it’s not because of you,” you interject a little desperately. He takes a moment to search your eyes, but he nods when he believes you.

“Okay, it’s not because of me. But you shouldn’t need to do that. I don’t want you to do that. I want you to tell me when you’re sad, when you want to be selfish, and when you haven’t seen me in two months, it’s okay to be angry because I missed our date,  _again_.”

When he lets go of your chin, you turn immediately to stare at your shoes.

“I… was,” you mumble. “A little. Upset.”

Above you, Akiteru laughs in a sudden burst. “Okay. That’s good news, because I might not be able to take the rejection if you said it didn’t matter to you.”

“I’m fine  _now_ ,” you insist again. “I think it was just for ten minutes, or something.”

“Ten minutes is better than nothing.” He blinks guilelessly at you when you open your mouth to say something, and it dies before it can escape. “Sometimes caring is not being scared to be upset because it means something, don’t you think?”

“Since when were you so wise?”

“I’ve always been wise.” You’re rather impressed that he’s managed to say that without exploding into a tomato colour. “I just… y’know, am a very emotional wise man. It’s allowed!”

You can’t help but start giggling, the sound high and almost ridiculous to your ears, but Akiteru simply stands and smiles with your fingers wrapped around his. He wears a proud expression on his face.

“Well,” you finally manage, “you’re here now.”

Akiteru bends down to press a soft kiss against your forehead and pulls you against his mildly salty-tasting sweater. “Yeah. At last. Want to go somewhere this evening? This whole, long evening?”

“Pretend it’s still the afternoon?”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “It’s still the afternoon, we’re in a park and we can pretend the sun is still shining. Want to go get some lunch together?”

He pulls back and holds out a hand to you. The faint tear tracks are still clinging to his jawline, and his lips are still a little raw from his chewing on them, but he’s bright.

You take his hand and hold it tightly. When he beams, you can almost feel the warmth radiating.

 

* * *

 

It starts off as a bit of a train wreck, you realize.

“It’s fine,” you hear yourself saying. “I’m used to being…”

“Forgotten?”  **Kuroo** supplies. His voice is terse, strung of iron and laid tightly on tracks that keep him controlled. “Neglected?”

There’s suddenly a lot of phlegm in your throat. “Ah… yeah, that. Those. So, there’s really no need to worry.”

For a long while, Kuroo says nothing. The muscles in his jaw are working furiously to keep his words securely in his mouth, and you wait uncomfortably in front of him. It feels awful, like being told off by a teacher who doesn’t look at you much and uses the word ‘disappointment’ too often.

It normally doesn’t feel like this. Almost never, in fact. But the guilt roots your feet squarely on the baby blue tiles of an empty corridor leading to where the both of you were supposed to meet three hours ago. You recalled his face—he was more annoyed that you’d stayed to wait, rather than happy that he’d still managed to catch you—and now, well.

He’s not a happy camper, and you’re uncharacteristically demure, thanks to the irritatingly smug voice in your head that chants:  _I told you so_. Still, you’re not all lost. There’s still a tangible understanding between the two of you, your usual dynamic that fits your two minds like lock-and-key, and it keeps the atmosphere from falling apart by the seams.

You’re sorry, but you’re also shutting down. Kuroo reads that off your body easily. His fingers twitch as they struggle to not grasp your shoulders and shake.

Yeah. You know this wasn’t the person he fell for. Tough luck for the both of you.

He settles for pinching the bridge of his nose instead. You watch out from the corner of your eye, but you’re careful to keep your face angled away. You’re afraid, of both being sorry, and being incapable of being something you don’t have to be sorry for.

“We’re not really saying much, are we?” Kuroo half chuckles. He sounds tired and trying to hide it. “I’m keeping you here in complete silence.”

“I’m saying a lot in my head, in case you were curious.” He cracks a brief smile at that, and you catch the relief that’s still somehow present in the lines of his face. You didn’t expect him to, well, be something other than mad. “It’s all very noisy,” you add.

“Anything they’d like to share? Discussion is very much open for business right now.”

“I—” the blasted phlegm again. You clear your throat awkwardly. “They’re mostly just, um, panicking.”

“Oh?” Kuroo takes a step towards you, his hands falling to his sides. “Why’s that?”

It would be so easy, for either of you to reach up and close the distance. You place your hands behind your back.

“They know why you’re mad,” you answer him below your breath, and he has to stoop lower to catch it. “They just don’t know what to do about it.”

“I’m not  _mad_ ,” Kuroo protests, but sighs after a second thought. “Not in the way you’re thinking. I…”

When he stops mid-sentence, you twist your head just a little bit more to watch him anxiously. “You…?”

Kuroo catches your eye from all the way up there and huffs another laugh. This one sounds more exasperated than tired, and he cards his hand through his hair in his fashion whenever he’s stuck on something.

“I suppose I haven’t apologized properly yet. Not without ‘being mad’.” He waggles an eyebrow and you expend almost half your life force to keep from rolling your eyes. “So, I’m trying again.”

He steps into your space and pushes out all the distance between you and him. Of all things, it’s his warmth from his proximity that pulls your body into responding—you turn to look him fully in the eyes and find them simmering and soft. His lopsided smile beckons.

“I’m sorry that I made you wait this long.” His voice is low and intimate, and it makes you shiver. “I’ll make sure to check my schedule, always, and never to double book again.”

“I know you didn’t do it on purpose—”

“—Still,” he insists. “And god knows if I ever fuck up as much as I did today, you won’t wait for me. Not this long. In fact, you shouldn’t wait for anyone for three whole, long-ass hours, unless it’s an emergency.”

“You’re sorry?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Then I’m sorry too.”

Kuroo gives you a long look before making a sound of acknowledgement, very begrudgingly. It was impossible not to know what he’s thinking very loudly, but you’re grateful all the same that he’s not pushing it. When you reach out to twirl your pinky with his in a peace offering, there’s no missing the way his shoulders relax and his stretched expression slump into a smile.

“What should we do now?” You whisper conspiratorially. “It seems we’ve both stuck ourselves in a very liminal space.”

“What indeed,” Kuroo muses. “What do you your voices tell you? The panicky ones?”

“They’ve started complaining about how hungry they are.”

“Do they do recommendations too?”

“I don’t think so,” you say, grinning. “Lucky for you, I do. I have  _lots_  of opinions about food.”

“Oh, don’t we know it,” he groans, and pulls you into his side. “Very well, lead on, and maybe I’ll be so fortunate to hear your critique on whether grilled or poached shrimp goes best with hollandaise for the seventh time.”

“It makes you well-learned. You love it.”

Kuroo laughs, big belly laughs, and you can feel it against him. “I love something, yeah, but not sure if it’s that.”

The corridor seems a lot shorter now that the both of you are walking out of it. No longer the endless expanse of guilty encounters and unexplained complications, you can tell in the way Kuroo wraps his arm tighter around you when your fingers grip onto his vest almost for dear life.

You take the first step out of the indoors onto the busy street and before you can decide which direction to go in, Kuroo takes the chance to bob his head down and murmur into your hair.

“You don’t have to say anything, but I just want you to know that when you feel like you’re comfortable enough to talk about it, or if you need to talk about it, I’ll always be here. I’m not angry, and I never was. I just want you to be happy, and I wish you could see you the way I do. That’s all.”

He lingers there for a few more moments, and before he pulls away entirely, you gulp in a breath of fresh air for courage, and you turn to catch his lips with yours.

Neither of you know how long you stand there for, nor are you sure that you aren’t just sweating from your eyes and not willing back tears; but when Kuroo reaches up to cradle the back of your neck for more, all you find yourself caring about is how he’s smiling, and so are you.


	78. Tsukishima and Iwaizumi make their s/o cry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Toxic relationship, mentions of drug use
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> scenario with tsukki, yamaguchi, yaku (if you don't do him, iwaizumi?), kuroo and kyoutani where they make their girl cry :(( like maybe some fluffy where they cry of happiness or laughter and some angsty? you're such a creative writer i put my faith in your hands <3  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: Hello there, I’m really grateful you sent in a request, but I’m sorry to say that I think I might only be doing four out of all the characters you suggested. Especially with this kind of prompt, it takes a lot out of me, and I’m worried that I won’t be able to make it non-repetitive if I do so many renditions. I hope you understand, and sorry about it again._
> 
> _They’re a bit long, so I’m going to split them into twos, and also because I can’t write all of them in succession otherwise I will become an emotional prune and die. The second half will come soon. I hope it’s what you asked for, and I hope you like it. And just as a quick warning: you said angst as well as fluff, so this first one hurts._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: all potentially offensive/derogatory descriptions/names/labels do not reflect my personal beliefs. In fact, most of them are used self-deprecatingly, sarcastically and for dramatic effect. Small suggestions of drug-use.

He paints a damned picture, sprawled on the cushioned window seat that can barely hold his sheer expanse of leg and muscle at a balanced angle. Your apartment doesn’t have the view, not for some cheap pre-war complex that’s barely been renovated for its shitty pipes that freeze in winter, let alone the bricks and the shittier view, but there’s the light. There’s always the sunlight that’s driven the both of you into an addled haze when you’d first check out this hovel, and when the choice was made to rent out this cave in a wall based on some sunset addiction.

Through the cracks of the buildings opposite, the five pm sunset crawls in through the gaps of open sky with its talons in the weathered bricks, and one hundred and fifty million kilometres later the journey of the trash left behind from nuclear fusion breaks itself on the shores of someone’s unwashed jeans.

**Tsukishima**  doesn’t flinch even as the front door slams behind you. You watch him listen to you hurl your backpack into the far corner of the room as if it were some afternoon radio broadcast.

“You know I hate it when you smoke in the house.”

His fingers pause for a short second, the joint inches away from his lips and you can almost read the gears in his head turning for a daily sarcastic barb about his smoking. It was probably the highlight of his miserable day.

“The furniture isn’t going to get lung cancer if I smoke.”

“No, but it does make our house smell permanently like the backend of some junkie’s arse.”

His tired, drawn face breaks into a smile so small that if you hadn’t been watching for a reaction, there wouldn’t have been one to see. It wasn’t a friendly smile. Too much teeth, too much wincing. There was pain creasing around the edges of his eyes as if his muscles had atrophied.

“I thought the smell was what made you choose me.”

“I’d probably agree, but honestly, I can’t for the life of me remember what did.”

You head for the kitchen, a small dip in a far-flung corner of the studio. Neither of you cooked, and any motivation to learn had long vanished with all the funds for weekly groceries run. You subsisted on the welcome biscuits in your boss’ foyer, and Tsukishima—well, he’s not dead yet, so whatever he’s ingesting must be working well enough.

There’s still half a cup of this morning’s coffee left in the pot. It’s watery and cold, but you’ve had worse.

“The landlord dropped this into our mailbox.” You pull out the crumpled envelope from your back pocket and toss it over at Tsukishima’s motionless figure. “Probably about rent this month.”

“Probably.”

It pisses you off like some conditioned trigger when Tsukishima plucks the envelope off his lap and places it to one side as if it was some paper form of dengue fever. His fingers are long, several digits yellowed from prolonged exposure to second-rate cigarettes, but they had always been fairer than yours. Sometimes you wondered if he actually did any work, but he always managed to scrape by the bills without much complaint.

He takes a deep drag from the joint between his fingers and puffs it out against the glass window. It floats off in small loafs, giving the sunset its own little cloud ornaments lingering at its base. The stench of washed-up man intensifies around the apartment.

“Please.” It surprises you more than him to hear that from your lips, but today’s been a long, fucking day. You mean your please and thank yous about as much as you’d like to rub his feet. “If I wanted some atmosphere in the house I’d buy a damned smoke machine.”

“Lucky I come for free.”

“Kei. Don’t. Not today.”

The corners of his mouth fall, back into their motionless stasis, and to your surprise he flips the joint over and jams it into the stained ashtray by his elbow. His movements are strained, his breaths are heavy and measured and as he stares into the shitty view from his shitty apartment unblinking, a part of you wishes you had a camera just to take a photo of this.

If you weren’t you, if you weren’t standing there across the room with the rest of the coffee you can’t really afford and your eyes watering from the fumes of his cigarette—if you had simply passed by, seeing Tsukishima for the man that he had been, the man that he looks like, you’d probably get on your knees and pray to this god who’d never give you the time of day.

His blonde hair is set on fire in a blazing orange from the sunlight, and his lips, moist from his tongue dragging over it like a drug, and his chin is tilted back in a defiance that he had been born with. You could take his belongings, his name and his livelihood and he would still peer down his nose at you, that jawline crackling against the fading light and you would still feel as if you were nothing to him.

He doesn’t look at you like that now. He turns, so slowly that it almost matches the coarse ticking from the clock on the mantlepiece, and looks you in the eye.

Shit.

“Don’t look at me like that.” You run a hand across your neck to quit the stammering. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like—what did you do this time, Kei?”

“Is this what I look like when I do something wrong? I didn’t know I had a guilty face.”

You swallow. Your throat is parched as Satan’s little sandbox; it must have been the fumes. It must’ve. “It’s not  _guilty_ , it’s—it’s like you’re ready to pay some price. For whatever you’ve done.”

Tsukishima laughs then, the same laugh you hear too often. Agonized and dry and a small shadow of what life was like before—what sort of man he used to be. “So, it’s not guilt, but penance?”

“They should have hired you to write poetry. Being a paper pusher is clearly a waste of your talents.”

“Sorry,” he shrugs awkwardly. “Another thing missed, eh?”

You hate how he says that, and you hate how your spine straightens and pricks your back. Missed.

But you don’t say anything. You’ve said far too many ‘don’t’s for one day, and he’d be angry. It was partly why you do say it because Tsukishima’s face always breaks into an undercurrent of something other than blankness and ambivalence, and even though you feel like peeling your own face off from being such a fucking bitch to your boyfriend, you’d do it again and again if it meant that he’d flicker back to life.

He sighs, and it weighs like someone sank a ship in the Pacific Ocean. Even his breath smells like pungent, burning tar across the room. He still has that expression on his face, and you’re still petrified by it. Something slowly cracks in the distance and your fingers are trembling against your thigh like some crack head in-between takes. He focuses on that.

“I paid the rent for this month. Let me know if the landlord hasn’t got the transaction.”

“And?”

Sad.  _Sad_. His eyes are fucking sad even if he sits as stiffly as always and you want to slap it out of him. Neither of you have any right to be sad. He least of all, being sad without you. The fuck is this cop-out?

Tsukishima is strung so tightly in his relaxed as fuck position against the windowsill that it sounds in his voice. “And. I paid for the next four months too.”

“You do that, and we have no money for food and possibly electricity. You know that.”

“I left some in your bank account. You should be alright.”

“ _‘You’_?” Oh, no, no no. You’re stopping this fucking train before it goes where you think it’s going; before Tsukishima takes all the sadness with him and leaves you with absolutely nothing.  A husk in a middle of a bigger, brick husk in the walls. “Tsukishima Kei.  _What did you do_.”

“Honestly?” He ambles to his feet and shrugs again. He’s still taller than you by a good head even so far away. “What I should have done a long time ago.”

“You’re sticking a knife into this, right now? Seriously?”

His pressed lips crumple and he finally looks away from you. The carpet doesn’t guilt-shame him like you would. “That’s not what I meant.”

“And what did you mean? Pray, tell, because I am beyond completely bewildered.”

“I mean that I’m doing what’s right for once. Not what’s easy, not what I want.” The carpet offers no response, but you can hear the breaking sound getting louder. “We’re not good for each other. We’re not even good  _to_  each other.”

God, and didn’t you know that. No healthy, sane couple would rip each other apart the instant they’re together because it’s the only thing they can do with ease. No good person would be cruel because that’s what the other is used to—no human being deserving of a relationship would  _do_  this to each other.

It’s been so long, and neither you nor he have considered admitting out loud that things have gone wrong. It’s just how it’s grown to be, and if he can smoke, you can come home and drink some piss-tasting coffee in this shithole and still wake up the next day next to each other; that’s better than nothing.

Or at least, it was. Now it was nothing’s turn.

“Why are you the one to leave? What gave you the right to make that decision?”

“Nobody. Nothing.” Tsukishima finally drags his eyes back up to yours, and he offers you a wan smile. “Fucked up again, sorry.”

“You’re not sorry. Stop fucking saying sorry.”

“I  _am_  sorry.” You can’t move, and it makes it easier for him to come closer. “You’re sorry too. Sorrier than I ever can be, from how much you hate hearing me say it.”

“Oh, fuck you, therapist.”

Tsukishima laughs again—the most he’s laughed in two weeks—and it’s with feeling. He’s genuinely laughing at the crap that springs out of your mouth like it’s a really good joke. Oh yeah, it’s all just a fucking joke. “You can lie, but I know you trust me. I’m doing what should’ve been done. The house is yours, for as long as I could afford. I’m all packed and everything.”

A lot of the things were his. His endless rows of books on second-hand shelves, the sheets of paper with incoherent scrawls on them littered all throughout the apartment. The dirt-tasting brand of tea he likes, and the coffee stains that neither of you have the energy to clean up. He’s packed all those, too. And you have to wonder, what’s left?

“You’re an asshole.”

Tsukishima quirks a smile. “A bona fide asshole.”

He’s a mere step away from you, towering over the crown of your head but somehow still managing to stare into your eyes. They’re welling up, and the flush of anger that splashes through you almost bowls you over. He extends a hand to cup your cheek, to keep you steady.

“Don’t cry,” he whispers.

God fucking damnit, you can’t stop just because he told you to. His hands smell like they usually do—charred, salient and like a good grand wasted—but they’re warm and dry, and his thumb is still soft as he brushes the flood of frustration that streams down your cheeks without your permission.

He hasn’t looked at you like that in three years. You haven’t heard this tone of voice in four, and you—you haven’t been in this much pain since ever. It was like you had a heart condition and then one day someone decided to just rip it right out of your chest to solve the whole problem.

“I have to go,” he murmurs. “I waited for you to get back first so I could tell you in person, but my taxi’s arriving in five.”

“Well thank-fucking-you, for waiting for me to get off work.” You’re supposed to sound angry, but the hiccups are ruining the effect. Tsukishima’s fingers curl up and brush against your temple once before falling back to his side.

“You still have my number. You can still call me if there’s anything wrong.”

He’s lying through his teeth: both of you know he’ll change it within the month. You know the feeling as well as he does, of staring at a name you can’t ever call, of sitting in diners with cold pancakes wondering if today is the day the right caller ID lights up your phone and everything can fall back into its insidious familiarity.

After all, if either of you were good at resisting temptation, you would never have fallen in love in the first place.

“I won’t,” you tell him. “And you won’t either. I know you.”

He smiles again, soft and exhausted, bleeding his remaining years through the lines on his face. You don’t move away when he leans down to kiss you. It’s warmer than the stale nights in bed with the other side empty, and behind your closed eyelids you watch yourself being kissed by him for the first time, ten years ago, on a bridge in the pouring fucking rain and a realistic worry of getting pneumonia the day after.

Tsukishima taps your chin once before he pulls away. The kiss leaves him looking drained, as if he’s only got months to left live on heartache. “I have to go.”

This is it. The sun will still be shining through those ugly ass buildings across the street, and the furniture will still stink of Marlboros, but the windowsill seat will be empty tomorrow morning. And the morning after that. And the one after that.

When he turns to reach for the door, you grit your teeth.

“I hate you. So fucking much.”

Tsukishima laughs, but he can’t lie away the pooling in his eyes that catch the afternoon light.

“I know. I hate you too.”

He closes the door quietly behind him when he leaves.

For a split second you consider setting fire to everything in this god forsaken apartment, but the urge rushes out of you in the next shuddering breath you take.

It seems you’re still crying even though whatever’s enabling it is shrivelling up and dying inside you; and when you put the shaking mug still in your hand to your lips, it tastes like cold, watery coffee and the dregs of Tsukishima’s morning tea.

 

* * *

 

“Scream.”

“Nudge me any closer, and I might just.”

**Iwaizumi**  raises an eyebrow, something you catch out of the corner of your eyes, and you offer him a weak smile, adding, “That was not a suggestion.”

“And mine wasn’t either.” Although he takes a step forward, he doesn’t reach out to you. The distance remains unbridged, and Iwaizumi squares his shoulders where he stands. The wind eases a little on you.

You wonder if you’ll ever manage to loosen your face out of this permanently wan smile you display at everything. It’s left the realms of social reflex and turned into a muscle cramp; where your eyes are supposed to be creasing along with the upturned corners of your lips, they’re straight and flat and dead. Your lips waver and fluctuate between a smile and a grimace.

Iwaizumi hasn’t commented on it yet. Although the short drive out of the hotel had been filled with isolating silence and meaningless questions, which you replied wanly to every single one of them, he had soldiered on with his foot on the gas pedal and his eyes sharp on the road. You took whatever scraps of privacy he gave you.

There is nobody around for miles. As far as the eye can see, endless green swaths the cliffside, jagged boulders slicing out of the ground here and there in a macabre dance. Iwaizumi stands too far for you to consider him beside you. All that’s left is yourself, the soft, hilly ground underneath your feet, the wild western winds and two hundred meters of empty space between where you stand and the crashing waves below.

You keep your fists clenched and bound tightly against your sides, head held firmly facing the front and your knees locked in their positions. You aren’t going to insult Iwaizumi by thinking he can’t tell—anyone with eyes can see that you’re as tightly strung as a medieval torture rack, but you’re going to hope that he overlooks how you’re holding your breath. That your puffed-up chest isn’t because of some faux-bravery, but it’s because you’re trying to contain the hallucinations that haunts a breathless man.

Like you, Iwaizumi keeps his position held like a fortress. His gaze bores into you so fiercely that it’s beginning to bruise, but without hesitation, you’d rather walk straight off this cliff than meet his eyes.

There’s less farther to fall.

“I mean it,” Iwaizumi repeats steadily. “Scream.”

“No,” you say right back.

He stares at you wordlessly for a minute or two. One or two minutes that you spend firmly grounding yourself into your heels, taking heavy breaths in the harsh morning wind that blisters your cheeks and thrashes your hair. There’s nothing, nothing, too much nothing for one person to hold down.

You bite onto your lower lip and keep your chin held high.

And then, Iwaizumi laughs. It brews as a rumbling in his chest, the sort of sound you hear when you’re watching some crappy anime next to him and he’s trying hard to pretend he doesn’t find it hilarious. It stings, and your fingers wrap harder around your thumbs.

His laughter grows, expanding and bursting through his chest in a punch of cracking thunder, and each note that bellows out of him is as sturdy as the way he plants himself. He means every second of it. You flash through your options: if he’s either completely lost it with the new country getting to his head, or he’s laughing at your expense, at how you—how you stand and fight and how could he possibly judge what you are? What you’re doing? From a man who understands the parts of you that you don’t?

You’re  _not_  going to scream. You won’t. You  _can’t_.

“You should see yourself,” he smiles broadly. He doesn’t care that you freeze at the insinuation and takes a step closer to be heard above the din of the sea. “You don’t even know how you look.”

You squeeze your eyes shut and let your jaw grind your teeth shut. “Well I’m sure you’re going to inform me very soon.”

His hand is the first thing you feel, fingers tangling in the windswept mess that is your hair, and then the back of his hand trailing a soft stripe down your neck and along the pointed angles of your collarbones. You swallow, hard, and his wrist bobs from its movement.

Iwaizumi leans in; his voice comes low, coarse and insistent by your ear.

“You look like some sort of spirit,” he says. The warmth from his words condense behind the nook of your ear with the morning chill. “Some wraith, some terrifying sea goddess the tour guides keep telling stories of: the wrathful maidens, spurned wives, the sea god’s daughter.”

Your expression tightens. “Thanks.”

He dares to run a hand down the curve of your back, and it feels foreign, as if all the intimacy you ever had between each other had vanished—and you had become a living ghost standing on top of a forgotten hill, your hair billowing behind you and your wrath curled around you in wisps. He touches you with care, reverence, and as long as his fingers brush against you, you are a stranger to him.

And then he pulls away, and you are alone again.

“I know you’re probably angry at me for trying to make you do this.”

“I’m not angry.”

“I can see it from the way you stand. You’re not breathing, your teeth and gritted and you’re not looking me in the eye. You’re angry.”

“I’m  _not_ —do you know what you’re asking?” However still you were before, you channel his nonsense, the mythical fury that’s had decades of maturing in some god forsaken box underneath your ribcage where you’d imprisoned everything. You whirl around and turn on him. Iwaizumi blinks once, unyielding, and accepts it. “You can’t just take me out here at whatever hour, there are people waiting for us back at the hotel—my boss is probably going to murder me if he can’t find you—and—scream?  _Scream?_ ”

You’re more or less there, frankly. The both of you know that, but he doesn’t shy away, he doesn’t respond, and only stands there with that firm yet patient expression between his brows that just incenses you because it reduces you to a child. The child you really are. The child that he’s trying to lure out with false promises of screaming and shouting and feeling, and lord knows you’ve done your best to murder that child in cold blood years ago.

It still fucking breathes, under it all. Battered, bruised, bleeding and yet he stands up beneath all the bullshit that’s speared into his guts and he has the courage to  _cry_  when he hears Iwaizumi’s order, to reach out with grabby little hands crusted over with iron and call out for help.

Iwaizumi can’t do this. You should never have agreed to come here. This was emotional blackmail.

“You’re crying,” he says softly. He extends a finger to wipe away the chilly tear pooling under your chin and pulls back again. “You haven’t cried in years.”

“Maybe it’s the wind,” you retort, but it’s thin even to your ears. Iwaizumi shakes his head, a wry smile tickling the corners of his mouth.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stand any closer?”

“To the edge? I’m scared shitless of heights. I know what you’re doing.”

“Okay, what is it I’m doing?”

“Pushing me.” The wind has calmed its howling, but the morning dew still stings your throat when you breathe in, feeling no clear headed than before. “Getting me to say it.”

“It’s been years,” he reiterates. “Would you prefer if I begged?”

You squirm at the idea. Iwaizumi begging—pleading—that was just wrong. It was beneath him, something that would disgust you if you had been the cause. Yet when you turn your head just a fraction, there’s no lie in his eyes. He offers himself to you on a platter, on the edge of a cliff, the morning before a wedding, with six years’ worth of time and effort pressing down on his shoulders. The words he says are heavier than gravity this high up.

“No,” you finally answer. “Don’t beg.”

He smiles very slightly. “Then I’ll ask. Please, will you try screaming?”

You shiver. “Is talking not enough? If I’ve been too quiet, too… distant, I don’t know. If you ask, I won’t lie.”

“This isn’t about me. I don’t need answers. This is about you, and how you’re pale and drawn on odd nights, and how your lips twist when you’re bitter—yes, I notice—and how you speak so tightly and the breaths you take are so difficult they make you shake.”

God, you can’t look at him. There aren’t even any birds for you to follow, and your feet turn inwards to point at each other as you transfix your blurry eyes on the farthest sliver of horizon there is. But you can’t stop listening. You can’t cover your ears without your fists unclenching, and if that happens—something will unravel. Something you can’t possibly let escape through your fingers.

Iwaizumi speaks louder.

“You’re happy to talk to me about happy things. I know why you don’t speak when you’re bubbling at the edges. I know that you find it difficult to fall asleep, I’ve heard— _fuck_ , I’ve heard the times when you’re dreaming and you’re gasping for breath like you’re drowning. I just don’t tell you when I wake you up. You don’t hear your own nightmares, you don’t see your reflection when you think that you’re alone in the room.”

“ _Jesus Christ_ , Hajime,” you cut in, your voice shattered and doing the ‘bubbling’ thing he had spoken of. “All in one go? Is that how you’re going to play?”

When he pauses his tirade, you finally get to see past the knight with a shield that blocks the winds from reaching you: you see how his edges are unravelling, his fingers flexing like he’s aching to grip something so hard it breaks, and his eyes are wild enough searching for something in you.

“All or nothing.” He closes his eyes. “It’s how we’ve always been.”

“For better or for worse,” you add weakly.

“And this is the for worse part. You’ve got another thing coming if you think that I’m just going to stand here and pretend that you don’t need this. That  _I_  don’t need this, for the both of us.”

This was the double blade of being with Iwaizumi. Maybe of love, in its entirety, but you wouldn’t know. What might’ve known sits underneath with the abandoned child, crowing at the jail bars.

“Do I really do that when I sleep?” You ask quietly.

“The gasping?”

“The gasping.”

“Yeah.” It is he who turns to stare out at the ocean this time. “Like you’re being suffocated underneath someone’s hands. When you wake up you’re always in tears. I just wipe them away.”

“Why?” It hurts to ask.

“Because you look so much more relieved when you stop dreaming. I don’t want… I don’t want to see you trying to relive your dreams. I wanted you to forget them.”

“And my reflection?”

He turns back to look at you, his weary eyes roving over your expression. “When you think nobody’s looking, you stop having expressions. You blank. Sometimes you stare at the wall and you tremble at whatever goes through your mind. It’s like you let yourself die when you’re not required to be alive.”

A smile spreads over your face alright, but it’s far from wan. It’s the bitterest thing you’ve ever had the freedom to wear, and the taste lingers in the back of your throat like bile. “I suppose you’re right. Trust you to have me mapped out like a country.”

“You’re a world,” he corrects you firmly. “And don’t think for a second that you can be mapped out even if I wanted to.”

“So, this—I mean, asking me to scream—this isn’t a formula? Not some destination at the end of a road?”

Whatever you had meant in better words, it surprises a laugh out of Iwaizumi and he retraces his steps back to you, close enough for you to feel his body heat. “You think I’m trying to solve a problem? I have no idea what I’m doing, and the last thing I’d try is to fix you like some broken machine.”

“Inspiration, then? Intuition? The grieving wife reach you in your dreams?”

“Oh, fuck you,” he half chokes, half laughs, and you crack a faint smile. “It’s not a failsafe. I just—I just know it’s what you need. You shouldn’t have to scream into your pillows, afraid someone will hear you.” With one arm behind you, he stretches them out to either side, like a gull. “What’s here to stop you? The sea isn’t going to care, the winds are louder than either of us, and there isn’t a man in sight. I know you. I know what this sort of place means to you. They shouldn’t have chained you up, sea-goddess.”

He makes you sound like some sort of beast, some sort of monster, but he’s staring at you with a small curve to his lips and there’s nothing that doesn’t feel like conviction in every movement he makes. You faintly recall the way he had gripped your hand on some off-limits rooftop six years ago, and in a moment of madness, he bid the both of you jump.

You weren’t fucking normal, but you weren’t born to be. Iwaizumi saw, and normal wasn’t what he’d chosen.

He drops his arms to rest a hand between your shoulder blades, fingers splayed out.

“You’ve been screaming on the inside for a long time. What’s stopping you from doing it on the outside?”

“What’s—oh Hajime,” you can’t help but laugh. It doesn’t quite reach your eyes but it’s an improvement from before. “It’s not something you want to hear. It’s—it’s not the screaming that’s the problem.”

“Then what is?”

“If I say, then I’ll have to do it. And there’s nothing you can do to take it back.”

“Okay.” He nods. “Then do it.”

Fuck it. Fuck. It. You kick your shoes off with your heels, and whatever fear of God that the towering height of the cliffside strikes into you, all you can bring yourself to feel is hysteria—what’s the worse that could happen? You could fall? You could die? You could do and think all the things that lay muted and bound on some crucifix of all taboos?

You force yourself to look down at the two hundred feet and let the wind sway you. This was the first time you’d felt anything near alive in months.

“The real problem with screaming,” you shout for Iwaizumi to hear, “is that once you start, you won’t be able to stop.”

But he had told you to, hadn’t he? Fuck everything, including regrets, right?

So you squeeze your eyes shut, force your mouth open, and you scream. Even when the wind sweeps away your voice and the waves drown out the way it breaks in your throat, you keep screaming. Even when Iwaizumi comes to wrap his arms around you so lightly you thought your ribs would crack. Even when you can’t feel your eyes and your breaths are going to rupture your chest, and the tears pool in your mouth with salt.

You scream, and scream, and scream.


	79. Tsukishima and Iwaizumi make their s/o cry (follow up)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> scenario with tsukki, yamaguchi, yaku (if you don't do him, iwaizumi?), kuroo and kyoutani where they make their girl cry :(( like maybe some fluffy where they cry of happiness or laughter and some angsty? you're such a creative writer i put my faith in your hands <3  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: On request, here’s a PART TWO for the Tsukishima scenario. And that’s it! No more! Hope you enjoy!_

It all feels awfully familiar when you step onto the balcony for the first time that evening. You’d held out for as long as you could, the swarm of office workers, various department heads and a little ring of CEOs hovering around the canapes with half finished champagne flutes being handed to their assistants in favour for each other’s business cards. Why bother, you’d thought, being so high up the fiscal ladder they’re just one generation from all being inbred, frankly.

You wouldn’t be away long enough for them to miss you. No, you’re far too dry, composed instead of all open arms and beaming smiles, and simply far too uninterested in competitive golf to really fit in like you should. At the very least, several ladies seemed to have welcomed you into their midst after complimenting your shoes, and rightly so. You’d bought them with most of your monthly disposable income on a complete impulse, hoping that it’d cheer you up for at least an hour on a shitty Thursday. You’d waited three days for your mind to feel something about them, and that was two weeks ago.

The edge of the balcony was far enough for you to throw them off without hitting someone, you wager. But you don’t. Partly because you don’t fancy being arrested for decapitating a pedestrian, but mostly because it would make you even shorter than you were in comparison.

And, that back you would recognize even in the afterlife, he was  _always_  taller than you. Even when you towered over his wrinkled seat, his gaze had always been fixed on something further than your words, somewhere past a plane you could follow.

He was hunched over the glass railing, his white shirt crumpling into origami figures underneath his weight, careless, dismissive of the fact that he had to return to the very room you had left sooner or later. Maybe he hadn’t changed enough to care that he’d be talking to his boss with swan-shaped creases on his elbows later.

You see him turn, ever so slightly, and there’s a tired smile in his voice that brings all of the lost yesterdays back into your breaths.

“Don’t mind me. I’m just taking a small break.”

 _Manners_ , now that was surprising. With how shit he was with those, you’d have thought he needed to sign up for a course to learn them from scratch.

You certainly feel something for your shoes now—utter regret—when each step you take sounds like a tolling bell for a scheduled execution.  _Clack, clack, clack,_ they chime. It’s with a practiced, completely false confidence that you ignore the way the doors slide shut behind you with a soft squeeze, and head inevitably towards the railings.

They’re beautifully crafted, neo-modern and so transparent that it takes almost no imagination at all to picture yourself falling from the other side.

Tsukishima leans against it with the ease of a man who can fly.

“Does this place still count as an indoor venue?” You rest gingerly on the glass, a rather disrespectful distance away from your only companion. Trapped between heights and an ex, you weren’t sure which one you dreaded more. “You might be fined if you get caught smoking.”

“Are you going to report me?” He asks, the tired smile still pasted firmly on his face. He hasn’t looked at you yet either, but you’re long past inexperienced enough to take it as a sign of weakness.

Somehow, you find all this a bit hilarious in a demented sort of way.

“No,” you shrug, “that’s above my paycheck.”

He laughs. Or chuckles. Whichever could be used to describe the airy sound he makes, reminiscent of the soft squish the padded door had made.

“I quit a while back, so you’ve nothing to worry about.”

Truthfully, without the shared apartment and stained furniture, you haven’t worried in years. The suddenness of it stings, but you hear no bitterness in his comment. Perhaps it was the same for him—years gone by were just that: gone by. You dare a glance at his curled fingers in the nooks of his folded arms, and you find the stains gone, now white and delicate and bleached away by time. Even the memories themselves felt far away, like watching a monochrome movie that had lost half its film to decay. But you daren’t dip into the emotions. They were leviathans of their own, and one false step and they could roar.

“I didn’t know you were invited to this,” you say instead. “Have you been to one before?”

“Yeah. Well, no, if you’re talking specifically about being in a five-star hotel. But I’ve been to networking events before, even if software entrepreneurs dress like they’ve borrowed their dad’s old suit.”

You laugh despite yourself. There  _were_ benefits to these events, such as balconies and break rooms being ridiculously beautiful on clear nights, if one could accept the glitteringly vapid crowd. At least no eyeballs have to bleed. “Well, welcome to the thrilling world of private equity.”

“A pleasure,” he nods, tone dryer than single ply toilet paper. “I can see how ecstatic you are about your job.”

“Hey. You try being in a dress and have Important Men taking turns explaining Finance 101 to you.”

“Taking turns, huh? What gentlemen.”

“I’d throw you off this balcony if I could.”

“If you did that, they’d think you didn’t value your job. You don’t just toss new colleagues off high places as stress relief.”

“You’re right.” You roll your eyes. “I choose my victims very carefully and give them at least a six-month grace period until they’re not ‘new’ any longer.”

“Okay, if we divide the rest of your corporate life into six-month intervals, how many corpses will you be leaving in your wake?”

You move to offer something acerbic only to find him having already turned towards you, one arm supporting his head and an ambiguous twist to his lips. Your heels make a harsh clap against the flooring when you shift your weight, and his gaze flickers down to your feet and scrutinizes their posture. The twisted lips twist into something less ambiguous, and you watch with your heartbeat around your neck as all the things he had never dared to share with you somehow float to the surface of his cheeks.

Perhaps this was what they talked about, when people told anecdotes about spilling their life stories to strangers on a plane ride.

And no matter how much your throat ached as your saliva dried around your voice, that was what the two of you had grown into: strangers. Two individuals worn out by the herd, chatting and laughing and the only shared things they had were ten years gone and the chilly evening air thirty stories above an empty pavement.

You’d almost forgotten the question by the time you could reply.

“Just one.” Your head hurts from feeling too much and looking too long. You cast your eyes down the side of the building instead and find it no less metallic on your tongue. “Just one.”

Tsukishima doesn’t move closer and lapses into silence beside you; if he was still watching you with those calculating hazel eyes of his, you no longer allowed yourself to feel it. In stillness he drew into a statue, and as nature flees an approaching disaster there is no ambient sound, no physical habit, that can break the brittle silence.

After all, there were so many words in the air, buzzing their short lifespans; how could either of you simply pick one to speak aloud?

“I got married.”

Excellent choice.

Fresh air was clearly good for the soul, but the downside was that there was no server with copious amounts of alcohol required for shitty conversation topics. You’re proud of yourself for not even flinching, as much as you deserved to.

And Tsukishima says this flippantly, as if—what, like the two of you were close?

“Congratulations.”

No, you weren’t fucking close at all.

The strain in-between your gritted teeth is abated by fantasizing, vividly, about pushing your shaking fists into your abdomen and tugging out handfuls of your guts out, foot by foot, the heat of your traitorous blood smearing into the cracks underneath your nails. It wouldn’t even hurt enough to bring relief.

And picturing Tsukishima suffering the same was of even less use. It was a born in his nature—always tearing something out, one way or another, with each laugh that knocked together like falling boulders and how he’d sell slices of his frozen heart at the butchers, as if they could be enough recompense for all the poor choices he ever made.

It was always made worse with lucidity. Each word, each action, he chose with full knowledge of how terrible it would come to be because he was Tsukishima; ruled by his head and guided by a blade between his ribs, tugging him here and there with each twist of the wrist.

And, with that meaningless smile and an elbow propped up against thousand-dollar glass, knowing that he’d be watching another miniature world crumble, he would do it anyway.

“I’ve always been amazed,” he says, sounding every inch as unaffected as he looks, “with how talented you were at balancing a vat of venom with complete indifference in a single look.”

You turned and propped up an elbow of your own. This was a familiar game, the rules dried into your reflexes and it was one that had always been fought to the death, trivialized by too many lives to spend.

“Only to those who know what to look for.”

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you don’t hate at least half of the people in that room twice as much as you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Tsukishima Kei.” He blinks long at the sound of his own name, as if you’d just spoken in tongues, but there is very little satisfaction you can still feel. “And I’ve never been able to convince you to believe in something you didn’t. I’m not interested in starting now.”

“Don’t you?” The wistfulness—perhaps it had only ever been a veneer—had fallen and Tsukishima’s sarcasm returns in full force.

“And why are you asking me? Does it matter?”  _Has it ever mattered?_  Is the question you’d intended to ask but would never allow yourself to fall to. Occasionally, if you were to be very truthful, you did hate him with every drop of feeling you could cup in your worn little meatsuit, but not because of who he was. Mostly, it was because he was being an utter piece of shit, and you would gain nothing in telling him the obvious.

He dares a small shake of his head, and the smile he wears is peeling at the edges.

“It  _was_  the last thing you said. I’d thought you’d use your breath on something you meant.”

You grace him with a short look. “Sure.”

The smile spreads into a grin, bordering on manic and dispassionate. There is a short moment of pity that flits through your mind—you’re well accustomed to those looks, and each time, unfailingly, they are only ever directed at himself. Today, this evening, will not be an exception to a habit of a lifetime.

“I’m not doing a very good job of demonstrating that I’ve changed.” He hums into the distance. The sluice of shadowed treetops in the central park below rustle without an answer.

There are a dozen different options you could choose to say. Several are questions, half of them sardonic and the other half painfully desperate. The rest of them are a brew of silence, scars and forgetful laughter in the face of limited heart-space. The broken bits might have healed funny, but they have been healed all the same; all Tsukishima is doing is tracing the outline of burn tissue and knobby bones.

“Ten years is a long time,” you say slowly. “Long enough not to have to demonstrate anything.”

“I know.” He sighs faintly enough for it to be mistaken for a breeze. “I just thought that it’d bring up something. Or at the very least, feel familiar to be back.”

Oh, you’ve always been terrible at guessing his thoughts. Even up till the very end.

“Was… why?” You stifle a burst of incredulous laughter. “Don’t tell me you have rose-tinted glasses on? You, of all people?”

Tsukishima laughs enough for the both of you. “Come on.”

That was one invitation you were declining, delving too deep into irrelevant waters—what was the point in discussing the past on a deathbed? The only future, you hoped he wasn’t ignoring for fun and games, was one where both of you turned around and walked back into your jobs, ones that had been cultivated alone.

Or, in his case, not quite alone.

“And your wife? Would she be interested in listening to your trip down memory lane?”

He looked almost amused at the casual way you shot that loaded gun.

“Considering that she doesn’t exist, I don’t think she would. My ex-wife, on the other hand, would probably find it fitting.”

You’re annoyed at yourself for not noticing his ringless finger in the first place, having been stupidly caught up in the faded tobacco stains. On the other hand, he sounds almost relieved to be addressing her as such.

“Was she too nice for you?”

“Ahead of the curve, she was. She knew nothing about me, which she resented. Then, she accurately guessed everything about me, which  _I_  resented. This is clearly why the virgin dies last in horror films, you know. There’s this power in innocence, and it’s fucking scary.”

“And…you’d rather someone know everything about you, and resent it?”

He turns to look at you, with his towering advantage, and grips you by your insides with how much they’re ablaze with himself as the fuel. It’s a wildfire across countries, and suddenly you’re afraid that by the time one of you leaves the balcony, there will be nothing left.

“I’d rather I left behind the ‘resent it’ part,” he murmurs, “but I suppose I do. It’s what healthy people should do, right?”

“Right,” you echo faintly, and the smile that comes next is completely unbidden, something wild and uncontrollable and certainly regrettable later this night when your senses have returned, but it comes and it’s a tiny, soft thing that caresses your wounds with its fingers. “As far as demonstrations go, you’re doing quite a good job.”

“Surprised?” He asks, eyes alight. But before you can answer, he adds, “and likewise.”

That does surprise you. Both with how unwilling the past has moved on, and the age, the exhaustion, the quiet surrendering of your emotions to a calm bittersweet instead of razing lands.

“I’m sorry,” you say with sincerity, “that it didn’t work out between the two of you.”

He waves a hand. “It’s fine. She’d said the same.”

It feels as if your chest had bid you farewell and thrown itself off the building instead. You weren’t quite sure if you were approaching imminent suffocation or combustion. Tsukishima says every word, does every motion, with an anticipation of the end, effortlessly.

“I don’t have enough left for games, Tsukishima.”

“And I’m not playing.” He pushes back from the railing and stands, hands loosely by his sides and singularly focused on you. “I’m just handing over my cards.”

“In a very strategic fashion.”

A side of his mouth slides up into a wry smile. “You’ll miss it if it’s gone. It’ll be so incredibly boring.”

“I’m old enough to appreciate boring, thank you.”

“Of course. That  _must_ be the reason why you’re out here with me. I have to say I never quite pictured you as a Private Equity kind of person.”

“Ah yes, if you want to say that to me and have it actually work, you’ll have to allow me to adjust your employment papers with HR.”

“My old CFO was pretty torn to see me go, you should know.”

“For your sparkling personality, I’m sure.”

“I can be sparkling, if the occasion calls for it.”

“ _In a very strategic fashion_.”

His rare, endangered species of a smile was dangerously contagious, and it had, from where his feet had frozen a comfortable distance away, leapt across the few feet and had commandeered a sizeable portion of your own lips.

It was infuriating, had always been, in the most inconvenient times where arguments should have been serious, or when there was no time, no space for anything that solemnity, and it would squeeze itself into the gaps and build a home there. Each time, the foundations would crumble, and it would have to wait for another chance.

The smile follows Tsukishima when he turns away, the distance an intangible thread unravelling itself on one end, and the home is let down gently. You never realized how much longing a low voice could hold until he speaks, lumbering and heavy with the years that reminds you of exactly how much time never mattered.

“They’ll start missing me soon. Introductions and all.”

Nodding dumbly like a doll on a dashboard, you pried your mind into remembering how the world you stood upon had not upended itself enough that you could vanish for the evening without repercussions. The soft, apologetic smile on Tsukishima’s face is a quiet peace offering for pulling you back.

“You have all the cards,” he reminds you when you offer no words. Your lips are stuck together with an acute sense of choice that drags your heart down to your feet. “You can text me, when you’re ready.”

That drags your voice back against the roof of your mouth and you raise a weary eyebrow. “You’re expecting me to go through your files just to find your number?”

He stares for a moment, an inscrutable gleam in his eyes until he shrugs, as if this wasn’t one of the most dangerous moments in your life.

“Okay. I’ll text you it then.”

And as breezily as he had re-entered your hard-won bubble of safety, he pushes open the double doors and departs, slipping back into the hungry swarm as one of their own.

* * *

It takes the rest of the evening for your work to be finished, and half your freshly minted business cards are gone along with any strength left in your calves. Home in your mind has reduced itself to the foyer, where you kicked off your heels with vicious satisfaction, and your bed, on which you had collapsed and allowed yourself to hate social interaction for the rest of the early morning.

Without thinking, you reach over for your phone and lift it above your head, turning it on.

There were fifteen unread mails in your work inbox, but easily picked out in bright blue amongst the rest sat the only text message.

Tsukishima had sent, with almost no sense of gravity at all:  _‘thanks for the welcome into the company, co-worker’_

Perhaps there were worse ways to end a day, but you doubt the fresh pain in your chest would be abated long enough for you to fall asleep tonight.

Calculated till the end, you let the message hover unanswered, knowing that he had taken a wild guess, and he had been right, like he’d always been. Your number had been unchanged, and he had kept it tucked away in his contacts list. He had probably predicted, with all the evidence in a single conversation, that you wouldn’t have to guess the sender either. That you would be surprised, hopefully touched no doubt, that he hadn’t changed his number even if he’d lied that he wouldn’t through his teeth that day.

Neither of you would believe if you’d simply claimed to have forgotten to.

There is an overwhelming urge to hurl your phone at the wall and bellow into your pillow, but age and financial responsibility has mellowed you out into someone pathetically responsible.

Like a good mortgage paying, retirement saving adult, you allow yourself a heavy sigh in lieu of destruction, and plug in your phone to charge before closing your eyes for some sleep. There’ll be a meeting tomorrow, after all, and if life had waited that long for a chance to tug the rug from under your feet, it could wait a little longer.


	80. Tired Oikawa after practice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> hellow! would you be able to do a scenario with oikawa and his s/o catches him late at night practicing volleyball (honestly i find guys that have ambition and just wanting to improve so hot anyway moving on) and his s/o can obviously see he's tired as hell so just as he practices his serve and it bounces to the floor she picks it up and steals it from him and he tries to get it back from her but she just cutely runs away with it and cute events ensue and he realizes how damn in love with her he  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: There might have been a slight time gap in-between writing the first and second part. Hopefully it doesn’t show too much. Hopefully it also doesn’t show my breakneck writing speed near the end either. Hopefully, you enjoy this!_

It’s a Tuesday, just passed eight thirty. Or it should be, since the last time Oikawa checked the plastic clock in the changing rooms was when the sun was still up. Now, he can barely see the sky behind the slim window slits that surround the edges of Seijou’s gym, and whatever light there was had long shifted away from the wisps of clouds.

Without a watch and without the gym’s digital timer switched on, he’s learned to trust the biological clock that ticks with each routine practice he works on day after day. His muscles scream at him with varying degrees of desperation during very specific intervals of his solo practice, giving him a decent idea of how much further he still has to go. A slightly masochistic way of timekeeping, but pain has never been effective in holding him back.

Oikawa tosses the ball between his hands, letting it slap his calloused palms in penitence. Penitence that he can take—m _ust_ take—and he lets the sear of his hamstrings stretch along his bare bones with each fold of his knees. For him, it’s better this way. With the pain, he can measure how much he’s giving up for excellence, for the image of himself that seems to drift farther when he himself takes a step forward.

He’s glad for the sliver of air that the open doors breathe in; it’s his only reprieve. Otherwise, his eyes would be far worse off than simply stinging from the stream of sweat that pours down from his forehead. He flicks his tongue up to lick the stale saltiness pooled above his lips, and squints past the rawness of his eyelids.

_Just one more set. One more._

His eyes narrow and he watches the spot that he’s aiming towards with such focus, as if it would shift underneath his feet and disappear. Oikawa crouches, feeling the tension pull his body taught and arches into it. And then he leaps, feeling the floor kissing his heels goodbye and he’s up in the air; he draws his arm back as far as it can take and smashes it into the volleyball.

It hurtles forward with an electric jolt and lands centimetres away from its destined spot.

The resounding smack echoes through the gym, and he feels it thrumming in his head, the blood rushing from his chest into his ears, and the throbbing soreness his palm suffers.

He lifts a wrist to rub away the beads of sweat that trickle into his eyes, stinging them into tears.

“Phew, that was a scary serve.”

For a moment he doesn’t realize that it’s someone talking until, he  _does_ , and Oikawa has to blink hard twice to rid the fuzziness in his vision. Where the mystery voice came from stands a familiar face, almost as if materialized out of mid-air, with her small hands wrapped around the ball that appears unnaturally large. He watches her watch him with curious, surveying eyes.

“You aren’t picturing anyone when you hit it, are you?”

Oikawa breaks into a smile that looks a lot more tired than he feels. “No, not particularly.”

“Well, I’m glad you aren’t, and glad it’s not me.” She tosses the ball up experimentally, and her hands sink when it lands in her palms. “You know, I expected this to be lighter.”

“Is that so? Volleyball players’ muscles are just for show, then?”

Her eyes sparkle with a worrying mischief. “Would that be so bad?”

“Not if it’s working,” he answers, and watches her struggle to hide the sudden flush to her cheeks.

Their coach had locked up the rest of the balls early this afternoon, so the only one that Oikawa’s left with is the one sitting snugly in her hands like an overinflated balloon. It’s too big compared to her tiny height, and he sees her curl unconsciously around it, protectively, like a pet. It does look rather comfortable there, and now he’s definitely distracted.

It  _is_  almost nine, he reasons with himself, he’s more or less earned the right to be distracted.

Still, his fingers twitch restlessly against his sides, strained with the pent-up energy it had borrowed from the sharp smacking pain against the volleyball. There isn’t nearly enough ache in his thighs, his knees are still propping him up just fine, and the voice that curls up the length of his arms hiss at him:  _it wasn’t high enough. Not fast enough. Not good enough._

Oikawa steps forwards to beckon for the ball before he notices himself moving. He couldn’t know what expression he was making, too exhausted for restraint, but she had been watching with those hawk eyes of hers behind those glasses and she takes a step back in response. The ball presses tighter against her ribcage, and she half-turns away to protect it—or to protect him from it, most likely.

“You’re tired,” she says softly. She doesn’t want to scare him away quite yet. “Your mom texted me to ask if you’re going to be back in time for dinner.”

Oikawa tilts his head, puzzled. “They haven’t eaten yet? It’s nine.”

“Oh, Tooru. You know they always wait for you if they can.”

“Oh. Well, I,” he begins, but he loses the words before he finds them. He frowns instead. “I turn my phone on silent when I practice.”

She wisely chooses to say nothing in response, but her eyes are thoughtful and her grip on the volleyball tightens. She watches quietly as Oikawa seems to pull himself out of the safe he keeps everything non-sport related in, the heat in his face cooling down as his mind’s unending gears roll to a slow halt. The soreness seems to intensify, and what had been a bearable discomfort grows into a more human burn that he usually gets the day after an intense work out.

“Is it starting to hurt?” She calls from across the court. He can’t help but think she sounds rather cheery about it.

He shakes his head, and at that, even his neck seems to cry out.

“Yeah. I must’ve pushed harder than usual.”

“Hmmm. Can you still walk?”

Now, Oikawa was tired, not dead. And most certainly not stupid. With his itchy and probably reddened eyes, he peers at her. Her fingers tap against the ball as they always do when she’s thinking something. Calculating.

“Yeees,” he says slowly. “I believe I can still walk faster than you.”

“Is that so?”

He draws in a deep breath. “That is so.”

“Okay.” She breaks into a roguish grin. “Okay. So, let’s see how fast you can really walk, then, Captain.”

Before he can spit out something smart to hold her back, she whips around with his one and only ball cradled like a baby against her chest and sprints out of the small crack between the open doors. It’s a foul—definitely a bloody foul—and Oikawa almost trips over his own feet the first few steps he takes in pursuit. It takes all the hurried steps between the middle of the court (which he  _does_  pause and turn off all the lights and switches to before locking up, because he’s not a complete barbarian) to the small crossroads in front of the school gates for him to catch a glimpse of her figure, weaving in and out of a line of cherry blossoms planted beside the school walls.

Oikawa takes a second to gather his breath and check his shoelaces in case he ends up tripping over himself and possibly embarrassing himself for the rest of the month. They’ve been dating for a good while, but it doesn’t mean that the sight of her mischievous grin doesn’t ignite a pleasant burn in his chest, and his fingers that itch to draw her into close proximity just to hear her strained giggles as he pokes her to death.

A third party would probably retch in their mouths a little at this moment, but Oikawa kicks said imaginary party aside and does what he does best. Holding his head up high and pretending to belong exactly where he is, even if it is the realm of possibly over-saccharine revelations.

He hoists his gym back further up his shoulder and calculates exactly how far and how long he’ll need to traverse to reach his desired destination. In the cream glow of the streetlights at night, he can still pick out her waving arm and swaying figure, most likely doing her best to taunt him.

Oikawa rocks slightly on the back of his heels, and then sinks low. He takes a measured breath and sprints straight ahead at her.

He’s grateful now for the mellow burn in his calves instead of its usual searing ache, and he marvels at how easy his feet bound forwards—he hasn’t had an excuse to run at full tilt in ages, not since he’s missed his bus two months ago—and although he can pick out the sudden chirp of alarm from where she stands, there’s still enough moments for him to relish the sound of the evening wind whipping past his ears in torrents.

It’s hardly fair competition, but Oikawa crashes into her all the same with a wide grin splitting his face in half. She squawks when he collides into her, knocking her completely off her feet, but when he picks her up off the ground entirely, volleyball and all, and flings her around in a wild circle, the squawks turn into peals of laughter.

He lets her down once he starts feeling too much blood rush to his head. He holds a hand to his head, still slightly winded from all the laughing and the activity, and she does her best to force her features into a firm, and poor, replica of a disapproving look.

It doesn’t quite have its intended effect, not with the drunken staggering.

Oikawa cracks into a fresh peal of sniggers, and points at her. “You look like a really grumpy salaryman after one too many drinks.”

She tries even harder for a few seconds or so, but gives up when she sees him almost doubled over with laughter; his hands on his knees and bent at the waist—if one didn’t know where to look, this young man with too much vibrancy coursing through his veins would almost be unrecognizable as the older, wearier man in the gymnasium with all the weight of his future digging into his aching shoulders.

If it makes him smile for longer, no matter how short, she would stagger and frown as much as she could.

“I believe I won,” she announces proudly, still swaying faintly from one side to another. “You cheated! You ran!”

Oikawa takes a moment to gulp in some air in between laughs and peers up at her. “And you didn’t? What was that, then?”

“I am a very fast walker.”

“You were literally bounding across campus!”

“Isn’t running just extremely fast walking?”

“And is flying just extremely fast falling?” Oikawa demands incredulously, but she’s twinkling in her eyes and the way she throws her head back when she’s got the upper hand distracts him entirely from a perfectly formed argument. There’s barely any light that isn’t too orange at this time of night, but somehow, she stills manages to glow from her cheeks. “You’re still holding that thing.”

She looks down. “What, the volleyball?”

“They’ll count tomorrow, you know. Coach is insufferably anal like that.”

Grinning, she tosses it up and catches it again. “Technically you could count this as a handicap. For our contest.”

“Which you cheated in,” Oikawa says, rolling his eyes, but he’s smiling because it’s impossible to stop himself. He hasn’t felt this completely off kilter in far too long; he misses the liberating sensation of completely losing his mind to whatever his emotions felt. “What would you do if we agreed that you won, then?”

“Dinner,” she answers promptly. Which makes him wonder if she’s simply plotted this all along, since she’d stepped into the gym, looking for him.

“Dinner? Won’t your parents be expecting _you_  home?”

“I called them before I went searching for you.” Oh, she was practically vibrating with poorly concealed satisfaction, and Oikawa can’t find it himself to stop the choking laughter that bubbles up his throat either. “Whatever you think, Tooru, I am far sneakier than you are.”

“I’m beginning to readjust my expectations already,” he agrees readily. She beams, even if he’s not sure that it’s quite the compliment he would have chosen for himself.

“Okay. Then I win, you can take your volleyball, and we can all go to get okonomiyaki. Does that sound good?”

“Don’t think I don’t see what you’re trying to do. Sneaking in your win like that.”

Laughing, she tosses the ball at his chest with a small jump in her step. “Accept your place in the universe, Captain. And don’t pick battles you can’t win.”

Oikawa warrants nobody ever talks to him as candidly as she does, and quite honestly, he wouldn’t let anyone else do it. He was many things, but not as enthralled with himself as many consider him to be, and no matter how much Issei or Hanamaki would literally bury him with blackmail if they’d ever caught a whiff of his after-school exploits with his girlfriend, he allowed himself this one luxury. This one happiness that fills his chest without him bleeding for it, and having someone else split into jaw aching smiles because of something  _he_  said; this was far out of his depth, but one he was more than willing to flounder in.

“Alright, lead the way.” Oikawa grips the ball with his arm against his waist, and jerks his head ahead. “Bus stop?”

“Mhmm. It’ll be my treat today, so eat as much as you like.”

“I appreciate the heads up!”

She laughs all the way to the deserted bus stop, reserved only for school routes, and he trails behind her with an uncharacteristic smile on his face.

He’d remember this, for as long as he could and as clearly as he could, underneath the harsh lights of the station and the poorly pasted phone advertisements; she stands with her hands wound behind her back and leaning towards him, waiting for his steps to finally bring him to her.

And Oikawa doesn’t say anything when she hooks her arm through his and it’s oddly tender, as if afraid to press too hard on his bruises. He doesn’t say anything when she glances at her phone and smiles slightly at an incoming message. He doesn’t say anything when he turns on his phone and there aren’t any messages from his parents after she’d found him in the gym.

He doesn’t say anything at all, only smiling and humming in the way he allows himself when he’s alone with her, and she rests her chin on his shoulder as they stare out at the empty street, waiting for the next bus to arrive with their hands around each other.


	81. Tired Tsukishima being comforted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> i cant get the idea of a stressed tsukki hunching over on his bed with his head in his hands looking down and his gf just coming up from behind him and wrapping her arms around him and kissing his the back of his shoulders just a scenario with tsukki not being a salty shit and for once genuinely showing himself being upset and his s/o comforting him or cheering him up being an absolute goofball which is her normal persona  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I did my best trying to work with an upset Tsukishima and a goofy significant other. It ended up extremely difficult to picture him being vocal and very visibly upset whilst she’s cracking jokes and everything, so I attempted to reach a happy medium. I hope it’s still faithful enough to what you wanted, and I hope you enjoy._
> 
> __

His mother lets her into the house first. Their walls are well built, but the ceilings were hollow enough for sounds to pass in and out freely and Tsukishima can catch every footstep that pads against their waxed floors. He doesn’t hear much exchanged between them downstairs; perhaps a nod, or an understanding expression that he can picture without much effort.

He considers berating his mother for doing something unnecessary again—he wasn’t old enough to pay taxes, but he most certainly was capable of recruiting his own emotional support brigade on his  _own_ , thank you very much—but he recalls the worried twist to her lips when he’d returned home after practice with obvious strain in his voice.

Tsukishima wasn’t going to kid anyone. He was fully aware that he was a terrible son most of the time, and a terrible brother. He only wishes that he could be not-so-terrible a lover, if that was the only thing he was to accomplish. But she walks up to his door, socked feet planted carefully on the opposite side of his room and taps her knuckles against it.

“Kei?” Her voice wafts in, muffled by the thick carpet that fills in the bulk of his bedroom. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah,” he says, trying hard not to venture into the realms of bitterness quite yet. She’s never had to ask to enter his room, what with her propensity to barge in as often as possible to scare him for the shits and giggles. A strong friendship between her and his mother didn’t help his case at all.

That may be the reason why he swallows dryly after his answer. The realization that this time she may turn around and leave him alone if he really had said no was not a welcome one, and it rings unfamiliar bells in his head that he’d rather not face.

She slides the door shut behind her as silently as possible. It closes with a gentle click, and he counts the moments she requires to gather her breath and make her way towards him.

He breaks his blank stare at the opposite wall long enough to peer at her out from the corner of his eye. She’s a fuzzy blur without his glasses on, but he still watches with bland fascination as she perches on the edge of his mattress as if discovering her manners for the first time in her life.

Tsukishima looks away. That was too harsh, even for his fickle conscience.

“I suppose my mother asked you to come over,” he says instead.

She works her mouth for the right things to say, to her credit. “No, but you do usually send me a few texts after practice. Radio silence is… unusual.”

“Keeping tabs?” He asks, and damn, the no bitterness rule was supposed to last longer than five minutes.

“No, I don’t. It was just a feeling.”

He turns fully to look at her then, eyes still slanted and his jaw uncomfortably tight against something unidentifiable that attempts to claw its way up his throat. “I see. Well, how can I help?”

“I was…” He watches her struggle, her eyes flickering behind the wall of control that she’s likely learned from him. He’d always made comments about how she’s so different from him that it’s a miracle they’re together, but he sees now, past the veil of self-satisfaction, that it’s not a look that suits her.

“…What?” He says, a little less unkindly than before. “Hoping you could help me?”

“Yes.” She raises her eyes to meet his, squarely. “That’s the gist of it.”

He snorts lightly. “Well, thank god your psychic powers of observation sent you here. God knows what would happen to me if you hadn’t.”

Saying nothing, she continues to stare at him as if he was an ancient inscription, waiting to be unlocked by the powers of determination.

Frankly, it makes him squirm. Tsukishima suspects it’s why she’s doing it.

“Sorry,” he finally mumbles.

He spies a small, relieved hint of smile that tickles the corner of her lips.

“It’s alright,” she says. “I’ve been around you enough to know what you’re like.”

“And what exactly am I like, then?” He asks stiffly.

He almost shrinks back when she suddenly reaches up for his face. Resting a thumb on the furrow between his brows, she presses down and rubs at it until the tension from his temples are forcibly drained. He considers telling her that she’s cheating, but nothing comes out whilst she’s still touching him.

“Prickly.” She shifts closer ever so slightly, so that her voice can soften. “Defensive when you think someone’s trying to pry something out of you.  _Offensive_  when you think someone’s trying to map you out.” She huffs a small laugh when he scowls again. “An extremely grumpy man who’s not saying no to a massage even when he’s pissed off.”

“Like you would stop if I told you to?”

“Maybe,” she answers, smirking. “If you ask nicely.”

“Yes, because I do that so very often.”

“You should, you know.” He misses her soothing rub very briefly when she lets her hand fall back onto her lap. “It’s good for your non-existent social skills.”

“And you’re not doing a very good job of comforting me, if that’s what you’re here for.”

“Are you letting me?” She laughs, more loudly this time. It does escape him sometimes, how she could literally laugh at everything in the face. She could face a pit viper and she’d do the tango around it if it could cheer somebody up. “But you’re not wrong,” she says. “I’ll try harder.”

He feels an urge to tell her that she doesn’t need to, but at the same time he knew it wouldn’t put her off. And it wouldn’t be true, either.

He can’t understand how she can look at him with such an open expression. As if she’s not aware that he could say something particularly venomous because he could, and it would break something.

“Kei,” she says gently, “will you talk to me?”

Well, he couldn’t very well tell her to go away. But he wasn’t sure—could he even really match her openness? Even with nobody else in the room and an entire evening to himself, he hadn’t been able to say a single word at his wall.

“Kei?”

Tsukishima groans, and turning away from her, dumps his head into his hands. “No.”

“Stress?”

“No.” There’s a baited silence, and he exhales raggedly. “…Yes.”

Behind him, she hums lowly in sympathy but doesn’t say anything else. He sucks in a deep breath.

“School. Grades.”

“Mhmm.”

“Volleyball. People.” He reconsiders. “Mostly volleyball.”

“I could hit someone for you. All you have to do is give me names. There’s no much I can do against a ball, though.”

“God,” he groans again, “really?”

“Tsukishima Kei,” she says very seriously. “I would punch someone in the face for you.”

She’s half about to laugh, he can tell. She’s not someone who can stay serious for very long. “Would you get expelled for me?” He asks, rolling his eyes behind his hands. “And then get a job at a convenience store because you’ve missed out on graduating? And then get married and washed-up and resent your child for holding you back in life and  _my,_ how could you have been so careless, punching your chances in the face during high school?”

“Maybe,” she says, “you’ve missed your calling as a soap opera script writer. I swear that’s a show somewhere.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t join in my mother for TV after dinner.”

“Too busy stressing, probably.”

“ _Hey_ —”

“Sorry, sorry.” He watches her shadow lift its hands up in surrender. “Jumping back into serious business.”

“You really are  _shit_  at this.”

“I must be, considering you haven’t turned around to look at me yet.”

If he rolled his eyes any harder, and any more, they’d probably be stuck to the roof of his head and he’d have to walk around looking perpetually unimpressed with the world. And it’d all be her fault.

He hears her shuffle closer. “I didn’t mean that, really,” she murmurs at his back. “You don’t have to turn around if you don’t want to.”

And Tsukishima really didn’t. His face, although muffled and slightly suffocated from the pressure of his hands, feels comfortable turned away from the world. It was warm, safe, and he didn’t have to open his eyes and watch the minutes tick by as his nerves ran circles around his mind until his body’s completely frozen and fraying at the edges.

He wants to close his eyes and breathe as erratically as he wants without having to care about how he sounds like to anyone else. He’s got enough trouble trying to stay sane without being required to prove it to someone else too.

The truth was, he expected more from himself. This was not breakdown worthy, as if he was some special case. As if he had it harder than any other student.

When he suddenly feels arms pressing against his sides, he almost jerks to his feet. For a moment Tsukishima is horrified at the thought that maybe he’d just said all that out loud, as if he’d just signed up for therapy or some other activity that he’d rather be caught dead than doing. He holds his breath, waiting for something to happen, but she only presses closer, wrapping them around his hunched shoulders. He can feel the rise and fall of her chest against his back, and her fingers tucked tenderly underneath his collarbones.

He’s strung too tautly to manage to ask her what she hopes to achieve by doing this, and neither does she give him the time. She must have felt his breath hitch, for she buries her face into the crook of his neck and squeezes him tightly.

“I’m probably making you sweat,” she says after a good five minutes of sitting there silently, both pressed against each other. Tsukishima can’t help the shiver as her lips graze his skin. “But I think it’s working.”

“What’s working?” He says faintly.

“Calming you down.” Her arms slide down his sides at an aching pace until they rest snugly around his waist. There’s a shuffle behind him and she repositions herself with her legs crossed instead of on her knees. “Your breathing’s a lot steadier now.”

About ten different responses rise to his tongue, but she rubs her cheek against his shoulder blade, and he swallows them down.

“I’m… I—urgh,” says Tsukishima, very eloquently. She huffs into his neck, and he can feel her faint smile against his heated skin. “Not good at this.”

“You don’t have to tell me all of it if you don’t want to,” she murmurs.

“I thought you wanted to know.”

She shrugs against him. “Only if it helps. There’s no need for it to be now, if it makes you feel worse. I mean, I could always gather it later in the form of handwritten letters or poems in my shoe locker or something.”

“Jesus,” Tsukishima laughs thickly. “I’m supposed to be  _upset_  here. Stop making me laugh.”

“Laughing can either make or break you,” she says, smiling. “Which one will it be?”

“It’s incredible how much you have my best interests in mind.”

Tsukishima finds himself holding his breath when she doesn’t respond immediately.

“I hope I do,” she says finally, her voice solemn. “Tell me if it doesn’t seem that way.”

He lifts his head and heaves a laboured sigh. He covers her white-knuckled fingers with his own—no longer afraid of how rough his blisters may feel to her—and pulls her firmly into his back. It knocks the air out of her with a soft ‘oomph’.

“It does,” he says, feeling rather drained. “Don’t worry.”

She attempts to say something in reply, but Tsukishima’s fingers are still gripped tightly around hers and whatever she does say is lost into his shirt. He smiles wryly.

“Are you expected home anytime soon?”

She shakes her head into his back.

“Alright.” He shifts so that she’s rested more comfortably against him and gathers his breath.

“I’ll start from last week.”


	82. Terushima tries a strip club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Explicit content
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> please do a typical badboy terushima scenario with the shy sweet girl at school but there's a little twist? so they're maybe in third year high school and one day terushima goes to a bar/strip club with his friends and he sees her as one of the dancers there ? i'm a sucker for cheesy plots sorrynotsorry  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I apologize for changing your prompt, but I cannot in good conscience set this in high school. I know that this sort of stuff happens in real life anyway, but I strongly disapprove of anyone still in secondary education doing this. I sound like such a mom, but yeah, freshman year of university (or age 18) is my bottom line for anyone who wants to visit or work at such establishments. (Unless it’s involuntary, which opens a whole new can of worms.) I hope it’s still something you’re interested in reading._
> 
> _Partition (album ver.) and Crazy in Love (2014 remix) for listening, and whatever you want at the end._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Disclaimer: This is an imaginary strip-club. As far as I’m aware, no actual club functions like this. If some extremely expensive, Lex Luthor style club actually exists, I’m in the wrong socioeconomic bracket to even know about it.)

It coasted over his skin the moment the tip of his shoe crossed the threshold. The sickly summer night air slid through the styled spikes above his neck; the doorman’s frigid stare pressed between his shoulders, unwelcoming and suspicious.

A short breath hitched in his throat as his pulse swirled by his ears, but few seconds remined for Terushima to adjust to the thrum of his body before his friend shoved him forwards.

He stumbled over the entrance. It was as if a vacuum sucked the curtains on the humming cityscape behind them, and Terushima found his eyes unable to focus on anything except for straight ahead. His neck pulsed, straining against his skin, and a bead of sweat slid down his nose and paused above his lip. He flicked his tongue up to lick it off.

Ahead, the corridor was narrow, only wide enough for two people side by side at a time, but it was short and cool and dark, and the four of them could spy the low blend of magenta and violet lights that glided over the bumps and dips in the walls, obscuring far more than they revealed.

His heartbeat was far from steady, throbbing in his chest in pace with the hollowing bass shaking their soles. The air didn’t grow any warmer the further they descended despite his cheeks heating up, and when they finally breached the main foyer of one of the city’s most expensive and secretive gentlemen’s clubs, he reckoned that no manner of shots or smokes could ever permeate as strongly like the scent of sex and money could in this two-storey space.

The leader of their small party, the one who had soldiered ahead with a determined set to his face, beckoned for them to follow, whereas the rest of them fumbled along, dazed and drugged. With a numbered slip in hand, they reached a medium sized booth tucked away in the far-left corner of the sprawling room. There was a smoky stage that sat enticingly empty in the centre of the floor, ignored by all the patrons.

Although almost all the seats in the establishment were occupied by men, women—people in various stages of dress and knife-sharp inebriation—not a single head turned to pay them any attention as they fumbled through. Terushima was certain that the four of them were the only university students there and suspected that it showed. They had tried their best, or as much as their best could afford for this venue, but even in the dim lighting they stuck out like sore thumbs, surrounded by seas of unbuttoned Zegna suits and tessellated Moschino skirts hiked up impossibly smooth thighs. Terushima picked at his rented suit with his fingers, already feeling his perspiration seeping into the thin fabric.

He was the last to slide into the spacious booth, and for a minute the four of them sat in awed silence.

Their leader, only so because he’d had the luck of being lumped with making all the arrangements this evening, slapped the table with a palm to break their trance.

“After all this effort,” he said, too airily to be casual, “we’d better actually order something, eh?”

Someone else stirred from their stupor and glanced around.

“What, like in a restaurant?”

“I think so.” Their leader shrugged. “Or at least, that’s what I’ve been told. Doesn’t seem like anyone’s available right now.”

It was an understatement. If any servers existed, they were nowhere to be found. Yet none of their patrons seemed to have ventured out of their booths, and even the small crowd by the sprawling bar on the opposite side of the room was populated by people who seemed to have their drinks materialize into their grips without having to speak a single word.

Terushima grinned, feeling a bit weak. “Birthday boy, birthday duties?”

Said birthday boy scowled beside him, but when faced with the slightly desperate expressions of his friends, he rolled his eyes and clambered out of his seat.

“You all owe me one.”

“We’ll owe you five,” Leader grinned, “ _and_  we’ll cover your tab for tonight. How does that sound?”

Mollified, Birthday Boy gave a brisk nod and strode off.

Whether it was the eased tension, or their stasis broken by movement, Terushima unearthed a huge sigh that shook his body. The other two watched with sympathetic gazes and felt themselves unwinding simultaneously; someone had taken the first step.

Terushima rubbed a shaky hand over his face.

“God, we’re so lame right now.”

“Feels like our first time out, doesn’t it?”

“Dumb and inexperienced?” Terushima managed a chuckle and pushed himself higher on the smooth leather seats. It felt like caressing butter, the thick smell of polish and something else rippling under his fingers. “I kind of regret coming to somewhere so freaking posh. I miss my shitty American beer with the regulars and good ol’ Monique hitting up the dance floor with all the usual moves.”

Their least wound-up friend, a tall, toned man with a jaw far too chiselled to mean any good, fiddled with a napkin underneath the table, smirking.

“Just wait until you see Monique again,” he bit back. “I bet you fifty that you’ll be complaining about having to stomach the same old shit half a drink in.”

Terushima snorted but looked out into the crowded room with a small grin.

“I’m not taking that bet.”

Drinking it all in from a farther vantage point, the flickering shadows and slurred conversations seemed less intimidating from a seat on its fringes. Although the temperature in the club continued to oscillate violently between too cold and too hot, a second look through the club hammered in the truth that nobody really gave a single shit about anyone else unless they were sharing drinks, or in each other’s laps. Terushima felt a rush of appreciation for their well-chosen booth, far enough from stray gazes so that he’d be able to feel completely out of his depth in peace.

He hadn’t been lying about missing his usual fanfare, but that sat secondary to the way his breaths came shallow, his pupils dilating to better absorb the heady intoxication that flit over him in a slick, suffocating blanket. His rented suit was beginning to sink into his skin as the music, soft and murmuring as the eye of a storm, and Terushima was glad for his meticulous inspection of himself before he had stepped out of his house. If he ignored the adolescent in him, screaming for a lifejacket, he could pretend convincingly that he had been born, like everyone else in this place it seemed, into his Armani, an evening with it costing three times his graduation tux.

Three beats in, three beats out. His hands were trembling ever so slightly on his lap, but it was a very nicely covered lap, fabric pressed and scented, and surely nobody would be able to notice a thing out of place if it weren’t for his irregular breathing, and even then, they’d have to peer up close to tell.

“Speaking of up close,” said Terushima abruptly, spinning around to face the other two, “do any of you know how this works? The empty stage and everything, I mean. Is there, I don’t know, some kind of timetable for the girls? Like at the zoo or some shit?”

Handsome snorted, looking enviably at ease. “Flattering, Yuji.”

Leader just grinned and shook his head. Typical Terushima, frankly. “They should come out in hourly intervals. Girls,  _and_  boys,” he said pointedly, but Terushima just shrugged. It didn’t matter to him who got their rocks off to who, he was just interested in the women. “They have a show for, uh, about twenty minutes on that huge stage and then the staff here hand out slips for us to pick who we want to join us at our table for the rest of the hour.”

“What, like a private show?” Terushima asked, his eyes wide. “Serious?”

“Serious. But it always ends up crazy expensive because we have to bid for them. As in, if someone else writes down the same name as ours, we’ll have to outbid them.” Leader tapped his fingers on his chin, trying to remember the fine details. “That is, unless they request a booth specifically. But I think that hardly happens—I mean, tips aren’t expected here with the bidding system, so who wouldn’t just wait it out to see how high the price can go?”

Terushima ran through the entire process in his head with a frown. “That’s…that’s a little fucked up. We’re just auctioning them like bits and pieces?”

“It’s a glorified strip club. These places don’t exist without being fucked up,” Leader said with a shrug. “If you think about it though, they get a much better deal here. You get to choose, you get crazy rates, you don’t have to deal with fifteen horny fuckers grabbing at your bits all at the same time, just five or six rich dudes rubbing themselves through their Prada. Hell, even the bouncers here look like they’d  _enjoy_  pummelling gropey assholes.”

Considering how hyper-aware Terushima would be about the sheer price of everything here, it was unlikely that he’d be on the receiving end of the pummelling. He only hoped that whatever drinks Birthday Boy brought back for them would be strong enough to soothe his nerves. Even if there was the constant rule of no touching, he’d never live it down if he couldn’t even get it  _up_ , which would just be a waste of a good half hour of driving all the way downtown for their long awaited, birthday buddy’s special evening.

He’d almost hurt himself snorting at the thought of calling it that. As if they could rent the place for a Jurassic Park themed birthday party with a Ronald McDonald special. Handsome met his stare with a knowing twist to his lips, and Terushima wallowed in the comfortable knowledge that they were all aware that this was a freakishly expensive night out for four horny, bored guys who happened on a good enough excuse. At the very least it was a decent excuse, he supposed, better than ‘being single on Valentine’s Day’.

Reappearing from the depths, Birthday Boy approached their table followed by a carefully blank-faced man in a shirt and vest, holding a transparent tray of at least eight drinks balanced on it. Birthday Boy shuffled back in, and the man lowered the tray onto their table with no small measure of contortion and left them after a small, stiff bow.

They all turned to stare at their friend with shameless curiosity. He met their gazes briefly before flushing and rubbed at his unnaturally pink neck.

A wicked smirk spread across Handsome’s face like an epidemic.

“So. Got anything to share?”

Birthday Boy stared steadfastly at the most interesting tile corner of the building. “They told me that the show’s starting in five.” He waved at the small slip of card tucked safely underneath a startlingly aqua concoction. Leader eased it out and twirled it between his fingers, fascinated by the expensive looking embossment around its edges.

“Uh-huh,” Handsome drawled. “That  _must_  be the reason why you’re literally blushing all the way down to your balls right now.”

Birthday Boy scowled and opened his mouth to retort, but Terushima interrupted with a bark of laughter. “And don’t try to tell us that it’s just the lighting.”

“You’re all assholes,” Birthday Boy gritted out, but there was a reluctant smile that teased at the edges. Handsome only sparkled with his best imitation of an angelic smile, and his friend sighed resignedly.

“There was a bunch of uh, ‘interested parties’ by the bar, alright?”

Terushima peeked out of their booth, and true to his words, a small cluster of two men and three women were watching their corner with a slightly predatory look. He leaned back quickly.

“Maybe if you go up on that stage we’ll have enough to cover our whole night. Whatever you did to them, they look like they’re gonna march right over and swallow you whole.”

“In more ways than one,” Handsome added, and Birthday Boy burst into a vibrant pink as they cackled around him, but his expression wasn’t displeased.

Without warning, they all heard a hollow slam of a heavy switch being pushed. All the magenta, violet waves on the walls vanished, and gave way to darkness.

Whatever Terushima was about to say next died in his throat. The club fell silent for a heavy moment before a thick murmur rustled through the tables and booths; there were no other sounds, and even the air conditioning seemed eerily quiet after the hubbub of white noise before. It felt as if nobody dared even a breath.

At least, not until there was a soft click, and a lone spotlight homed in on a single spot on the empty stage in the centre.

A man dressed entirely in black and ironed edges slid into the pale circle from the shadows, unnoticeable. His hands were clasped elegantly in front of him and his chin raised so high that his cheekbones sliced into the spotlight. His eyes were impassive and hard as flints, but undoubtedly, even with his untouchable demeanour, Terushima could not deny that this was the singularly most frightening and beautiful man that he had ever laid eyes upon.

He glanced at Handsome and found his shared sentiments spread openly on his face, with a tightly leashed hunger that shivered underneath his eyes.

The man cleared his throat, and everyone fell into a hush, waiting on his instruction.

“Ladies, gentlemen.” His voice was dark treacle running over a fur rug, and all shivered. “The next round of entertainment will begin shortly. Fifteen of our finest have chosen to present themselves to you for one hour, and one hour only. Please hold onto your calling cards, and pen down the name of whichever talent you wish to invite for the remaining forty minutes. We humbly request all patrons adhere to the rules of this establishment, and our servers on standby are happy to assist you with whatever you may need.”

He made a movement to turn away, but halfway through his step, he paused, and something in his expression let loose. There was a wild gleam that displaced the ice in his gaze, and his lips curled up with a cruel anticipation that made him agonizingly unattainable. He reminded them all, in a low, lilting tone.

“This is an evening for  _you_ , and you alone. Hold nothing back.”

He lowered his gaze and with one smooth movement, he pulled back from the spotlight and melted into the inky darkness beyond.

Birthday Boy let out a low, drawn out breath beside him, and Terushima couldn’t agree more. There was an intangible string that had spun itself around all who moved and breathed, and he no longer felt his body—only that he was far too high-strung, hungering too loudly in anticipation for whatever was going to take up the pale disc of light on the stage next. From the silence that came from the booth next to them, and the one beyond that, the sensation was shared.

Leader was the first one to break the silence, his voice subdued and shuddering as he whispered to them, “this is why they don’t call this place a club.”

Terushima’s throat was parched when he spoke, even as saliva was pooling far too quickly underneath his tongue. “What do they call this then, a high?”

“The delirium. The waitlist for an hour is six months long, and nobody can describe what it’s like even after having been.”

Terushima didn’t doubt it, not the description nor the waitlist. Nothing had happened yet, but ever since the entrance had sucked him in and out of the ordinary night, a part of him already knew that nowhere could ever replicate this: the heady fragrance of slick power, and not a drop of it lay with the patrons.

A sudden powerful burst of bass shook the entire floor and the music crept towards them from the shadows, and they all turned to watch as the first dancer slid onto the stage floor.

It was a man, fully swathed with a billowing red fabric that glinted in the dim, warm orange lighting. As he turned in certain angles, there were glimpses of oiled, bronze flesh underneath the ballooning sleeves, that disappeared as quickly as they appeared. There was no prop to assist him; he had simply softened his expression, lost in the heady beat of the music, and danced.

There was nothing suggestive about his movements, which resembled a marriage of modern dance and traditional Beltane, but the swirls of his hips were hypnotizing, the curve of his neck too sensual for it to be accidental, and when he had finished, Terushima was almost terrified of what would come next if he had to bear this for another fourteen rounds.

“You’re lucky that it’s your birthday,” he heard Handsome murmuring over to Birthday Boy, “otherwise I’m sure as hell writing his name down on our card.”

Birthday Boy laughed, but it was strained, and Terushima could see that for all his usual preference for women over men, he was more than half tempted to allow it just to watch those limbs stretch and arch over his friend who in that moment looked half starved.

Leader grinned. “To think that you’ve got at least another six to get through. You might just evaporate and die at this rate.”

Handsome burst into laughter. “And what a way to go.”

The name of the man in red silk glowed in flowing cursive on a thick panel tucked underneath the stage. Terushima heard several pens scratching away through the quiet of the room.

The next performer entered the stage as seamlessly as the first and began her dance. She had far less clothing covering her, but they were no less buoyant and soft and her smooth, fluid arches and rolls soon made it clear why she had chosen that ensemble. Terushima’s eyes were dry from the lack of blinking by the end of her performance, and he grabbed the drink closest to him and downed half of it in one go. It burned his throat as it went, but it helped clear his mind enough for the next performer to take their place.

It wasn’t all a blur, for which Terushima was thankful for, as each performer was so different from another that it was impossible to mix up. The performers were never the same gender as the one prior, alternating between male and female in a continuous loop until Terushima had started to question his sexuality more than once over too many drinks to keep his heart from giving up.

Yet, it wasn’t apprehension that kept him on edge. There had been a certain level of discomfort at the beginning with their unfamiliar surroundings, but now, with three drinks flushing out the rational in his veins, he was simultaneously tense with a ravenous anticipation and a slow, steady thrum of arousal stirring in every gaze he drew of the stage.

Number thirteen, he kept count in his head, was female. None of the performers had made it possible for their patrons to guess their ages correctly, and she was no exception. Whether or not it was the makeup or her natural features, her skin was smooth and free of blemishes, wrinkles, and the blank canvas it appeared as was a crooked finger beckoning the highest bidder to smear their mark.

When the music turned on, Terushima watched with fascination as her expression crystallized. Any trace of innocence slipped off her in waves, and the twist of her lips and wrists, the way she panted into her sinuous movements, were all those of a lover, taking and drinking the draught of pleasure.

Terushima could not tear his eyes away. Her dance was the most visceral of all of them; heavy and suggestive and utterly, wholly sexual without being crude; her thighs tensed with each shift in her weight and she spun and stretched and ground her hips in tune with the relentless thump of the bass.

When he, his throat parched beyond reason, tilted up to swallow the rest of his drink in a futile hope to calm himself down, she chose that moment to throw her head backwards, baring her neck against the stark navy of her flimsy shift.

Her burgundy lips were parted with flushed exertion, and her eyes met his.

He almost choked on his mouthful of drink and pushed half of it down the wrong pipe. By the time his eyes had finished watering, the moment had passed. There was an enthusiastic murmur coursing through the audience when she struck her finishing pose, but no matter how hard Terushima tried to seek out her gaze again, she did not look his way again. When the noise began to die down, she turned and vanished into the darkness as her fellow dancers had before her.

Birthday Boy swallowed loudly beside him and groaned, his voice hoarse when he spoke.

“Holy, fucking, shit.”

Terushima surprised himself by answering. He had thought he’d passed on into the next realm. “Yeah. Holy fucking shit.”

“I should have guessed that was your type,” Handsome grinned, his arms crossed over his chest, irritatingly relaxed. “The previous girls were great, but I could literally hear you rising in your pants when she came on.”

“Fuck off,” said Birthday Boy, but there was no heat to it.

“Is she the one you’re gonna write down?”

“And end your chances of getting the first guy over here, all over your lap?”

“It’s your birthday, man,” Handsome replied, smacking a hand over his chest, “sacrifices have to be made for the greater good of our friendship.”

Leader snorted but said nothing. Birthday Boy turned to Terushima, a slightly dazed expression on his face but eyes still peering firmly at him. “What about you, Yuji? I know the others are okay with whatever, but you’re definitely a girl kinda guy. And you’ve got a lot of opinions.”

“It’s your birthday,” Terushima echoed, shrugging. “I’m fine with whatever too.”

Birthday Boy rolled his eyes, but still smiled. “No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.” Terushima let himself grin. “But I’m agreeing with this one. You  _were_ actually getting hard from watching, I could feel the air waves and everything.”

“Fuck off,” Birthday Boy said again, but he was already reaching for the card and the pen. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you. Pretty sure you were shadow wanking in your head.”

“We all were.” Terushima wiggled his eyebrows. “For the whole damn show.”

“Amen to that!” Leader added with a bark of laughter.

‘Amen’ was probably not the most appropriate of exclamations for this den of iniquity, but there was a strain in the air that made sacrilegious sweet on the tongue; enough to prompt Terushima for another drink, his pulse beating wildly in his wrists. Birthday Boy was right, there was a hard tent by his crotch, and his pair of slacks wasn’t hiding any of it. Despite it, it was difficult to stop replaying the way number thirteen had moved on the stage; it was like watching someone have sex with air, leaving a space all too dangerously tempting for someone to slip in and occupy the emptiness against her arching body.

Terushima gulped. Even when number fourteen took his place on the centre stage, he could only focus on the instant jolt he had felt when in that single moment, he had locked eyes with her. He kept it quiet between him and his glass, forcing his gaze up to the beautiful man that twisted and popped and made love to the stage, and tried his best not to picture her stood there, hips cocked and thighs taut.

When fifteen coasted on, he had almost completely given up on pretending to care. His friends still watched with rapture, but they too had their hands unclenched and tucked comfortably elsewhere.

A small selection of magenta lights flickered back on for those who had yet to write, but the four of them waited with contrived restraint as the invisible servers materialized long enough to lay a new selection of drinks for their table and whisked away their calling card. Already filled in, all that was left was for them to wait for the bidding to begin.

Terushima reached for his sixth drink: a hard shot of tequila. It was a familiar, nasty taste, and it brought him a temporary feeling of stability as the lights slowly began to dim again. He leaned forward in his seat, hands unconsciously wringing themselves on the table, and everyone watched with baited breaths as the first dancer, now with a more human expression, returned to the stage. Behind him, steely and distant, followed the host in black.

He paused at a small podium they had drawn out during the intermission whilst the dancer slipped back underneath the spotlight.

“We will begin the first bidding.”

Terushima jumped when instead of more speaking, their table flared into life. Nobody had noticed it before: a small but clear LED display underneath a sheet of glass that glowed the same curling pink letters of the dancer’s name in the middle. There were no other symbols or numbers that showed. They stared it as the seconds passed, and when the letters finally flickered away back into a black after a minute, the host spoke again.

“Transaction accepted.”

The dancer looked up and stepped off the stage, making his way towards a table near the entrance. He disappeared into the swimming indigo lights, leaving the man in black alone on the stage.

He beckoned with a finger at something unseen in the background, and the second performer took the empty space.

“We will begin the second bidding.”

One by one the performers dissipated into the waiting booths. The dark edges of the room swallowed them all into its belly until they could no longer be distinguished between dancer and guest in the cocktail of coloured lights. Leader and Birthday Boy exchanged a wordless glance, but otherwise the four of them sat for their longest silence yet.

There was a collective stir amongst them when number twelve was called. It would only be a matter of minutes until it was time for them to show their worth, and Terushima suddenly realized in full what a bidding truly entailed.

“Fuck. The people here are loaded to holy hell.”

Leader looked at him with a raised brow. “Yeah. No shit.”

“And the bidding? How the fuck are we supposed to outbid a hedge fund baby?”

“My sister,” Leader answered with a sip of his drink. When Terushima responded only with a look that bordered on disgust at a poor joke, he rolled his eyes and bared his teeth in a harsh grin. “Really. She’s dating the guy who choreographs the lighting, and she got us a one-off discount.”

“One-off—dude, this isn’t Black fucking Friday.”

“ _Yuji_ ,” Leader huffed, “trust me on this one, alright? We’ve got enough, it’s basically a free pass. All we can do is hope that nobody here outbids us past our set amount. I offered to cover drinks for tonight, but I can’t do out of pocket for this one; I got a car to pay off.”

Without a better argument, Terushima sank back against the plush and nodded with his eyes closed. A part of him regretted sounding so desperate, but the better parts of him had soaked up enough alcohol not to care beyond his immediate need. He cracked open an eye to glance at Birthday Boy for his reaction, and he noticed that the tension in his shoulders too, had eased very slightly.

He supposed that drinks, sex and a trunk full of expectations made it hard for one to take things casually this late in the game.

The man in the black raised his voice, and the stream of hushed murmurs through the room paused once again. He crooked a finger behind him, and Terushima felt the warmth freeze in his lungs when she stepped on.

The heavy sway of her movements had softened, and the thin veil of fabric that had wrapped around the bridge of her nose earlier had been removed, now tucked messily into the crest of her low neckline. She kept her gaze fixed calmly on the opposite wall.

The host turned to the podium.

“We will begin the thirteenth bidding.”

Their table flared up, and this time beside her neon name there was a small number sat at the bottom right of the screen in the same shade of pink. They heard a soft click, and Handsome jumped a little when the corner of the table closest to him suddenly popped open. He flipped back the loose cover, and they all stared nervously at the small finger pad sat on a small velvet cushion.

“Well,” Birthday Boy breathed, “I guess it’s now or never.”

Leader leaned over to hold his hand over the pad, but it escaped no one’s notice that his trembling was no better than the others.

“I’ve never spent this much money on practically nothing before,” said Handsome, attempting to ease the palpable tension. “Glad it’s not my own cash.”

“Of course not,” Terushima shot back, “you’re the poster slut-boy for free shit when you want to be.”

“Hey, hey,” Handsome laughed and held his hands up in surrender. “I’m sitting through some womanly wiles for you guys, aren’t I?”

Leader shook his head at his friends, reluctantly amused, and pressed his thumb onto the pad. The series of numbers burst into action and its amount rolled higher and higher until the finger was finally lifted off, and the frankly horrifying amount stopped. It blinked twice and disappeared.

All four of them jerked their heads up to watch the stage.

“God, I hope it’s enough. Or we’re in some hot water.”

“Not to sound like I know how rich people function,” said Birthday Boy slowly, “but I think that any sane person won’t go much farther than what we’ve offered. It’s like selling a car for forty minutes of lap dance.”

“Not even for the best forty minutes of your life?” Handsome asked.

Birthday Boy’s lips quirked up at a corner, and he smiled slyly at his friend. “Not even that. A Jaguar’s curves are just as hot to me.”

They shared a brief grin, the hardest part over and done with, and Terushima sloshed his drink around in its holder with a slightly easier devil may care attitude.

On the stage, the host gathered up his information to speak.

“Transaction accepted.”

Terushima gripped his drink so tightly he could almost hear it splinter into his knuckles.

She took her first step out of the bright ring and raised her eyes in the direction of their booth. Combined, they were staring so intensely it was a surprise that she didn’t spontaneously combust. All the blood rushed to Terushima’s head in a forceful  _whoosh_ , and with each blink, his blurry vision only grew worse.

“Holy shit,” he heard someone say, and his pulse thudded in frantic agreement.

Her gentle sway, barefoot against the chilly tiles, gave the illusion of a longer distance to travel, but within seconds that were far too short for Terushima’s understanding, she appeared before their table before he could even gasp.

Leaning to one side, she pushed a hidden button on the side of their booth and a small velvet platform rose from the ground in front of them. She stepped onto it, all shadows against a flame, and rested a pale hand against her lace covered hip.

“Good evening, gentlemen.” She was smiling, a subdued, knowing tilt of her mouth that swept over them one by one—but when it washed over Terushima, he could only stare helplessly at her, unresponsive.

Handsome was the first to shake himself out of his trance. “Hey,” he nodded at her with a crooked smile of his own. Terushima knew that he wouldn’t have a third of this confidence if it were a soft, moonlit boy perched on that platform. “Your dance was, uh… stunning.”

Her smile widened and warmed. It was also trained solely on Handsome now, and something in Terushima’s gut stabbed him in protest.

“Thank you. I’m glad it left an impression.”

“Yes,” Handsome laughed, “it most certainly did.”

She leaned back and turned to observe all of them in turn, and in the meanwhile, Terushima snuck in his own share of observing.

Despite the murky lighting, he could finally make out the dark colour of her eyes without the distance. His attention wandered over their gentle slant upwards, and when they creased into a crescent, they gave her a soft, luscious look that had him clutching into the plush of his seat.

She remained in the same outfit as the one she had danced in: a soft fabric that hugged her every dip in a low-cut jumpsuit. This was harder to discern, but Terushima took advantage of the attention off him and peered closer: it wasn’t any fabric at all, but several layers of thin black lace that wove through each other to create a fluttery lattice that bloomed across her. She was a tapestry, a rose, and if there were thorns he would let them cut, just to watch the wine-red splash against the uncovered.

He refused to let himself linger on the suggestive positioning of her veil, and instead locked his gaze on her lips. They were round, rich and thick, and their matte colour seemed to swallow any reflection of light there might be. Oh, if only he could put words to all the things he wanted to say.

“Uh. Yuji?”

He blinked. Birthday Boy was looking at him, highly amused.

“Think you just floated off to cloud nine there. She’s asking you your name.”

His cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Terushima Yuji,” he told her after he’d cleared his throat. “You can call me whatever.”

“Yuji it is then.” She spoke his name as if testing it in her mouth, breathing it through her nose and tasting it on her tongue.

Terushima placed his glass down on the table and moved an arm to cover an extremely receptive part of him that twitched at the sound of his name.

“Okay,” she said, the cryptic smile returning. “How do you gentlemen want me?”

Birthday Boy made a strangled sound at the question, and Leader bit back a grin.

“It’s this guy’s birthday today,” Handsome swooped in with a wicked grin. “We can allocate most of the time to him.”

“No, no,” Birthday Boy cut in with a slightly panicked look in his eyes. “I’m good if we just, uh, split it evenly between us.”

“Are you sure?” she asked softly, leaning in to draw a finger along the edge of his cheek. Birthday Boy froze in place and all ventilation stopped. “You don’t trust me?”

“Hold nothing back,” Leader repeated the words under his breath.

Birthday Boy swallowed with great difficultly. “I’m. Really okay. It’s—they’re covering my tab so, y’know. Best to be fair.”

Her eyes flickered over to rest on Terushima, and her lips twitched.

“That’s very kind of you.”

Handsome rolled his eyes so violently that they were in danger of escaping his skull.

“Suure,” he said, but turned to laughter when he was flashed a middle finger. “You can split our time in three. I’m fine with just watching.”

There was a brief pause where she searched his expression, but he met it with a confident raise of a brow. Understanding slowly spread across her face.

“Of course. I’ll show you a view worth your time, in recompense.”

Terushima thought that her goal was as good as accomplished the moment they’d walked into that suffocating, narrow corridor. It had been like blindly fumbling through hell, expecting the hands of the damned to grasp your ankles and pull, but the road opened up at the end to the devil’s private salon. He could still taste the thick fragrance in the air without even opening his mouth.

No, he could feel it all, rolling around like sludge against the roof of his mouth, slipping underneath his tongue, and sliding into all the gaps. He swallowed as unnoticeably as he could, but it felt like grating sandpaper, and her gaze shifted to single him out. He regretted putting down his drink then, as his fingers twitched and pressed tightly into his palm with nothing to squeeze for moral support.

She had him still in the corner of her eye as she sharpened her smile and swung her head over to hover over Birthday Boy’s. His lips were parted, and he began to pant in puffs of humid air against her cheek. She showed no sign of minding and pulled up a small velvet chair on the platform, gesturing for him to take his place beside her. He obeyed, knees shaking, and Terushima felt glad for once that he wasn’t the one going first.

As fluidly as her dance moves, she swung a leg over and rested herself on his lap. All Terushima could see was her back, her half pulled back hair now coming apart at the seams, and the soft curve of her behind. She leaned in to whisper into Birthday Boy’s ear, far too intimately, and without warning she wiggled a little in her seat to make herself comfortable. Birthday Boy, hidden almost entirely from view, gave a weak whine, sounding on the verge of expiration.

Not the worst way to go, but at this rate Terushima was more likely to die from either alcohol poisoning or being so agonizingly hard that something ruptures in his dick. He pinned his hands to his sides, well aware of being in shared company and he wondered faintly if there was anything he could sell without dying for a private room and her delicious smile against his neck.

The ambient music blared a hard, heavy thumping that filtered in through the speakers; the easy, delicate atmosphere mere seconds ago vanishing. Terushima could feel the leather booth vibrating underneath him from the force of the beat, and he was helpless but to watch as she leaned forwards into her benefactor’s face, thighs tense from supporting her weight as her fingers ran trails up and down the sides of his shirt.

“No touching just yet,” she murmured. “Won’t you be a good boy for me?”

He nodded jerkily. She broke into a slow smile beneath hooded eyelids and began to dance.

Or rather, it began as one. The music was heady and provocative, and her movements slowed to match its painful pace; he could see the way her calves tensed, as she swayed her hips from side to side, grazing the tops of Birthday Boy’s thighs. As the music wound through its notes, she followed its lead, pressing her body flush up against his heaving chest. Casually leaning a wave into him, her muscles rippled underneath her lace, and her breasts rising and falling against his cheeks—her hooded eyes twinkling. Her neck was pale and unblemished when she rolled her head and let out a soft huff of pleasure, and Birthday Boy found himself following her like a man bewitched. He only had a moment of lucidity left to ask for her permission with his eyes, and she smiled in way of permission.

Even all the way back in the booth, they could all see his chest stutter as he pressed his lips against the dip of her neck and sucked. She threw her head back and canted her hips forward until they were flush against him, his hands tucked into the small of her back to cage her within reach. Her hands unwound themselves from her hair and slowly scratched a trail up his thighs, catching on the uneven edges of his jeans.

With a shudder, he finished licking his trail up her neck, and she fell back into him, her now perversely dishevelled hair casting a curtain around them both and she held patiently still as he reached to push a lock of it back behind her ear.

A knot of that careful, restrained control earlier had been undone, and her eyes glistened with a vibrant recklessness. Her lips wet from her worrying, she drew a soft figure of eight into his hips, dragging her darkly painted fingers into his collar, popping several buttons on the way, and pressed their tips into his sweaty skin.

“I don’t usually dance like this for clients,” she breathed lowly into his ear, “but today’s a special day for you, isn’t it?”

Birthday Boy gazed back into her eyes, incoherent, but managed a broken nod. Her smile sweetened, pleased, she let her fingers trail lightly over the straining bulge in his pants. He gave a hoarse cry, and her teeth flashed in a dangerous grin.

She laced a hand into his sweat-slicked hair and gripped tightly.

“A kiss for the birthday boy.”

Her eyes were closed when she leaned in and sealed his lips with hers. Her hand in his hair clenched for a lick of pain and with her free hand, blocked from open view, ground a hard circle down below. In the moments where she pressed into the kiss, Terushima caught sight of their sliding tongues against each other and the bewildered look of pleasure that flashed over Birthday Boy’s face.

When she finally pulled back, there was a line of spit stretching between their mouths. The sight of it made her grin and reached up with a thumb to wipe it off before vaulting off his lap once again.

The three in the booth stared at their friend left in his seat, wearing a blissed-out expression and unfocused eyes.

“Who’d like to take the chair next?” she asked quietly from the side, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that she had more or less a man on the edge of orgasm boneless on her platform. Terushima leaned over to tug at his friend’s sleeve hard enough to slide him back into his original seat.

As he leaned over, he caught her confidence flicker. It happened so fast he almost thought he’d imagined it, but for all her dulcet tones and gentle patience, there was a brittleness to her jaw that hadn’t been there before.

He stared some more until she turned to look at him, and he took in the dilated pupils and the vaguely jittery huffs that passed for breathing. His eyes dropped to her chest then, swelling from the scandalously low cut, rising and falling in measured movements; he couldn’t help but run his tongue over his bottom lip and swallow again, dryly.

Her narrow stare had no intention of letting him go, not even for a second.

“Yuji? How about you?” she asked gently. His ears echoed with the river of steel that seemed undetectable to the rest of them.

He thanked his lucky stars that he knew enough about girls to recognize it for what it really was. He shrugged as casually as he could.

“Alright.”

His legs hadn’t begun to tremble until he’d made himself comfortable on the seat. A sudden, perhaps misplaced, rush of confidence had him acutely aware of the fact that three of his friends were watching him like a hawk. He was just about a slab of meat to be put on display, so he straightened up, pushing back his shoulders.

There was a pause before anything whirled into motion, and breaking it, she stepped onto the platform beside him with her bare feet noiseless on the plush.

He was unsure if this was part of her intention, pushing past the mazes behind each other’s eyes until the music pulsed without warning, jolting them back into action. Terushima wondered if she had somehow timed it, despite her flippancy beyond the little platform and the velvet chair.

This new song was very different. The bass was lighter but stronger, and there was no melody to accompany when she moved to take her position in front of him.

To his surprise, she didn’t take a seat as she had with Birthday Boy. She lingered for a moment, before shooting him a strangely challenging look and twirled around for him to face the slope of her back. Whatever provocation she had formed in her mind, Terushima found this one far too easy for him to suffer through.

There was a hush as the tongues of music trailed off into silence.

The club held its collective breath. Terushima sat with his hands curled firmly into his sides, and he caught only one sentence when she glanced back ever so slightly to murmur.

“Untie me.”

The beat dropped. His stomach leapt to his throat and his hands shot up to the black ribbon that hung innocently at the base of her neck. Terushima gulped, feeling on the precipice of no return, and pulled.

The bow unravelled and so slowly he thought his ribs would erupt, and he dragged the neat criss-cross of ribbon down her back until it tapered by her tailbone. Their ridges caught on the pads of his fingers, and he felt as if he was drinking laced chocolate, ladled down his throat in spoonfuls.

The ground shook with the force of the speakers, an obscene voice slurring its filthy lyrics, and Terushima felt faint when he reached back up to slide the bumpy fabric off her shoulder. She stood still, a slight jaunt of her hip to one side, and let his fingers trace their way down her milky expanse of skin. When they reached its dead end, she tugged her hand out of the sleeve and tucked it into a new fold by her waist.

She spun around above him, face alight. Whatever restraint she had toyed with at the beginning was being stripped off her as slowly as her suit was, and without warning, she dropped into a bounce and slowly slid her way back up with her hands pulling and tugging at her own body. Her fingers dragged into her hair and scratched against the bruised marks against her neck; swaying her hips from side to side, grinding forcefully into an invisible body.

With her head held high and her lashes fluttering against her cheek, Terushima found his eyes struggling to decide between drinking in her swollen, red lips or the way she danced her hands up the curve of her breasts. He didn’t need her to meet his stare for him to know that this was a taunt— that she was enjoying every moment of his torment—and there had been an unperformable performance she was moving to in her mind, determined to flush out of her system with his body sprawled beneath hers.

The moment she opened her eyes, both her hands wrapped around her neck in an exquisite replica of erotic asphyxiation, she smiled so innocently at him that a hot rush of anger hurtled up to his ears. Lying as easily as breathing shouldn’t have been such a reflex, and he could not stamp the impulse to bite it off her.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he snarled, twisting between a warning and an expletive. Her eyes darkened with mutinous satisfaction as she watched his lips curl around the word, and she spun around to stand with his thighs under her, the swell of her ass dangerously close to his face. He barely had the time to register the view when she bent down in one swift movement and pressed even closer to him, drawing her hands from her ankles up to her waist inch by inch. All Terushima’s words fled him then, the anger spinning past his ears and down below his pelvis.

He was aching,  _salivating_ , and she knew he couldn’t do a single thing about it.

Her back was still arched when she drew back up and dropped abruptly into his lap. He watched her hair bounce from the force of it, but his focus was soon helpless against her swaying hips, once, twice; her slim waist twisted back and forth in a sensual beckon and Terushima dug his nails into the soft sides of his chair to hold back the stinging urge to mould her flesh beneath his fingertips. Almost as if sensing his restraint, she pushed against it, rocking her body backwards with a liquid wave and she met his hips with hers and ground into him.

A laboured moan tore its way past Terushima’s gritted teeth, and he could catch the lilting laughter she tried poorly to hide. She reached backwards and dug her nails into his hair and let her head fall against his shoulder. He could feel the hot, humid pants from her lips a hair’s width away from his own; she traced patterns up and down her front and he found his breaths falling in pace with hers. His eyes were dilated to high hell, saliva pooling underneath his tongue, and a single gulp was all it would take to close that infuriating distance between them.

She leaned in, and Terushima felt his heart stop.

“Stand me up,” she breathed against his lips, her words dragging against the curve of her smile.

So, he did, surging to his feet with the speed of a desperate man, pushing her up against him. It was tearing his self-control to ribbons with how close she was and how very much he couldn’t touch her. From the way she hooked a finger around his before spinning around to face him, she seemed to feel everything as keenly as he did.

Body to body, she dropped to her knees.

The front of his pants was tented so painfully that he’d realized the possibly of passing the fuck out when she, the very incarnation of the devil, rubbed her cheek along the outline of his erection. She dared a wider smirk before swaying her way back up, ass pushed up against the cool air. He faced her for few seconds; her licking her lips as if tasting his scent, and he with his blown-out eyes and heaving abdomen.

It was impossible to decide whether or not he wanted this torture to end. Terushima felt as if he would crack and go insane if she simply walked off him, but there was no way he could slip underneath her lace, to taste her the way her canting hips were begging for, in a seat that came with none and too many rules at the same time. He obeyed without resistance when she pushed him back down into his seat with a hand, and in a tone that had him almost bucking into her, suggested into his ear, “Pull the other side down for me.”

His hand shook no less than the first time. The lace was warm and pliant from her body, and he slipped two fingers underneath it to pull.

He could feel the hungry stares from the booth, their view of a beautiful demon being bared to her waist by two digits; the pale, unmarked expanse of skin ran lower, and the dip of her ass was swallowed up by the remainder of her outfit. Deftly, she tied the abandoned sleeves around her waist, and sat back for Terushima to drink his fill.

Oh, and he did, greedily. The only thing that lay on her upper body now were three thin chains in gold that draped over her chest, linked together by golden flowers cupping the peaks. This was no garment—it was embellishment, over a plate of cream coloured dessert.

“No touching yet,” she reminded him softly. She tossed back her head in an arching circle a second time, her body curving into him, and so, very, excruciatingly, slowly, she spread her hands down his neck, underneath the collar of his dress shirt and down the bare expanse of his shoulders. He could feel her blunt nails graze his skin with each slow roll she pressed above his trembling thighs; each stretch and strain hypnotizing to the beat of the music that thundered in his ears.

And just like that, the song ended. The final thump of bass dissipated into the screaming silence of the room and several things, all at once, shattered.

“ _Yuji._ ”

She sighed his name like an ache, eyes fluttered closed and cheeks flushed.

After a second of hesitation, Yuji  _snapped_ , and with a vicious tug dragged her down crashing onto his lips. He licked the taste of smoke and roses off her tongue in harsh laps and swallowed all her whimpers hungrily.

And they were everything she had imagined—bruising, breathless, the sharp tang of blood from a bitten lip—and she gasped into the heat; her hips jerking and grinding into him.

Terushima’s hips thrusted up to slide against her, and with a broken growl ripping past his throat, came hard in his suit.

* * *

It had been three days since that evening—both Terushima’s most thrilling and most humiliating two hours, and although seventy-two hours had given him almost enough time for the designated chemicals to restart their pathways through his grey matter, he found that even on the dullest days there was still a small ache in his loins and a ghostly tingle underneath his fingertips.

He hefted his battered satchel higher on his shoulder, which weighed a very large boulder and then some, and let his feet carry his vacant brain across the corridor to the library he’d crossed more than a thousand times. It had been a surprise to find out that he was actually a very fast and very adept reader once he’d actually bothered to try during his first year of university, but unfortunately the revelation had only made him hate it more. It gave him even less of an excuse to slack off and determinedly not-read any of his required reading, so from then on, he’d made it a mission of his to commandeer a small room on the sixth floor where he’d pillage all the shitty romance novels (truly, anything that wasn’t non-fiction in the library really was ass-wipingly dreadful) and burn up all his study time trying to set a record for the fastest and most disappointing read.

The past few days had seen him almost locked up in that room tearing, page after page, through as many lazy smutty scenarios as he could.

Yet, barely a fucking half chub.

Pornhub, one might suggest dryly, considering Terushima’s masochistic aversion to written symbols, but he’d tried that. It was the _first_  thing he’d tried after waking up with a rock-hard boner tenting his running pants that night. He’d gotten everything ready too: the box of overpriced tissues, a new tube of KY jelly, and his monitor turned to face the bed. He’d pressed play, with a hand wrapped loosely around his dick, and then watched dismally as his erection wilted between his fingers. He hadn’t even needed to wait until after an orgasm for the sinking feeling of disgust and shame to sink in—it had begun to appear two minutes into the video, where all of a sudden Terushima found watching fake, emotionless, p-in-v action almost revolting.

In a fit of frustration, he’d deleted his folder of bookmarks containing all his favourites and wiped his entire internet history.

Two days later, he still hadn’t felt a slightest tinge of regret over it. A little fear, maybe, that two hours in the most expensive club in the city might have just ruined his prospects of ever watching porn again, but that would be dishonest. He was more afraid that he’d have to jack off, for the rest of his pathetic and academically in-debt life, to a fading memory of a dim club, a goddess on his lap, with three of his friends staring with a very clear view of his hard on.

He and Birthday Boy still shared quite a few classes together, but they’d only made eye contact twice since then and shared a slow, commiserating nod once. It’d probably take a long night out at a student bar somewhere near the dorms to achieve the level of drunkenness required to rekindle their bro-ship again.

Sure, Terushima had thought about asking his advice, but he was fast to conclude that chatting up a friend about mutual erectile dysfunction was really not a memory he wanted to die having.

Besides, what if it wasn’t mutual? What if he was met with disbelief and the haunting knowledge that he was just sad enough to be hung up on an hourly club, with entertainment that they had very literally paid a fortune for?

Something on his face must have betrayed his inner anguish, as Terushima looked up from his feet to find everyone else in the corridor giving him a wide berth. Several more veteran loiterers offered him rather pitying looks as they passed by.

Well, he’d take what he could get. It wasn’t likely anyone else would pity him if they really knew how his cock had him by the balls, both figuratively and literally. Smile, he reminded himself, remembering the way the passers-by had stared after him like he’d just been kicked in the dirt. And a good time to too.

Despite not being in the clearest of minds, his attention was snagged by the sight of someone shortly ahead of him, in almost a Pavlovian response. It was a girl upon closer inspection, and she wasn’t looking at him in the slightest—in fact, she was the one who was watching the wind brush through the tops of the fern trees outside, thoughts very much not in the building—and her steps were carefully placed one after another: someone who was well versed with their body and the dissociation of the mind required to function with their decision maker taking a holiday.

Terushima, on the other hand, almost tripped over his own feet. His hand reached up frantically to grasp at any support and the screech of skin against polished glass caused her to jerk away from the view. She jumped away from him with mild shock at the ungodly sound.

 _Glasses_. She was wearing a set of pale grey glasses with thick lenses that looked like they’d been passed down five generations. Even as Terushima pushed himself up awkwardly, not without a vibrant flare in his cheeks, they were the only thing that he could concentrate on. For an incredibly odd reason, he felt as if they didn’t belong on her, not really, not even if she did hold enough books in her hands that it made complete sense that she was almost half blind.

The silence might have lasted too long, too inconclusively, that she offered him a small polite smile, and made to hurry on her way as if she was the one who had almost fallen on her face.

And he—he wasn’t sure he’d ever get over the complete impulsiveness of this—he reached out to hook a finger around the strap of her bursting bag before she could run away.

When she spun around with much more shock this time, Terushima only held on tighter, unrepentant. Her frown seemed even more unnerving from this distance, as did the twist of her neck.

She pried open her pursed lips to speak, and her voice came a lot lower than he’d expected.

Terushima hadn’t even realized he was expecting anything.

“Can I help you?” Wary and mildly terrorized, her tone twisted in his gut.

He dropped his offending finger. “Um. I—didn’t mean to scare you. Sorry about that.”

He opted for scratching the back of his head out of awkwardness instead. She was still watching him with a slightly hunted expression, as if his apology had been some sort of harassment instead. Gulping his nerves down, he tried again.

“It’s—yeah, this might sound really weird, but I promise I’m not some stalker—it’s just that you seem really familiar.”

She waited, with no response. And Terushima—he was not a man who worked well under intense pressure, one must understand. So, with hindsight, opening his big mouth further may not have been the best option.

“Okay, I know I don’t know you, and you don’t know me—like, you’re just some girl who passed by the library with books, ‘cus that’s what people who come out the library do obviously, this makes total sense—but don’t worry that I’m a weirdo horndog who hits on random girls. Uh, I mean, you’re not—glasses aren’t really my thing, and half the girls I do go for probably don’t know how to read if I’m to be honest—but just, how do I say this? There’s this thing when I saw you? Déjà vu? I don’t know, sounds like something out of the fucking Notebook, but this is incredibly weird and I just, uh, can’t help…”

He trailed off, and she gave him a look that one gives to someone a bit slow on the uptake.

“Can’t help…?”

Oh god, there was her voice again but softer, and although Terushima was pretty sure that he didn’t have a voice kink, he wanted to hear it again. He  _needed_  to hear it again, to answer a question that seemed to be clawing at his chest without his permission.

“…Can’t help, uh. Uhm. Are you busy? Right now?”

The seconds waiting for her reply felt long enough for him to start suffocating. She glanced down at the assortment of books in her arms, and then at him, and then at the library, and then back at him. The fear was gone (which he couldn’t blame her for, he had more or less assaulted a stranger in a silent corridor) but in its place there was a sharp calculation, as if she were making a choice between options that he’d been left out of the loop about. He wished briefly that he was still holding onto her bag, if not to keep her there then for emotional support.

She turned to face him fully, clutching her books like a shield against her chest, and blinked once behind those formidable lenses.

“I’m not busy,” she answered finally.

“Oh,” Terushima exhaled rather than said. “That’s good. Then, uh, will you grab a coffee with me? There’s tea and other stuff if you’re not into bitter. I mean, as long as there’re chairs, right?”

When a corner of her mouth twisted into a wry smile, Terushima felt an irrational rush of victory surge to his head.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeated, almost making sure he wasn’t hallucinating this madness. “Then, uh, let’s go?”

Under her breath but not unkindly, she laughed at him and nodded.

* * *

After almost no consideration at all, Terushima had chosen a coffee place somewhere far, far away from campus. The walk was a bit much, but the further they were from academia in general, the less inadequate he felt.

It was a small place tucked between a supermarket and an antiques store with mediocre coffee, but the chairs were comfortable, and the selection of fragrant teas was outstanding. It was also populated with mostly older tea-enthusiast folks and being surrounded by people who considered him simply as ‘another of that generation’ gave him a free pass from any posturing he might’ve had to do.

She, on the other hand, walked in with an enviable blasé and slid into the seat opposite him. When the waiter—or co-owner, the place was too homey to have actual employees—came up to their table to take their orders, she left Terushima gaping as she rattled off the name of some historical blend without a moment’s hesitation. The smile she offered was so warm that Terushima instantly tagged it as a fake. It had the owner leaving with a light flush on his cheeks and he took Terushima’s comparatively layman order with a twinkle still in his eye.

“Huh.” He huffed once the owner had safely disappeared out of sight. “He never falls in love with me when he takes  _my_  order.”

That prompted a small smile from her, although her face remained angled away and her hands hidden in her lap. In a slightly retaliatory fashion, Terushima sprawled backwards and hooked an arm over the armrest.

“So, you’re more into tea than the coffee thing.”

“I like both, and he was kind.” She answered him so quietly that Terushima had to stretch his neck forwards to catch them in time.

“He’s not bad. I guess I’m not really your type either.”

‘Either’ slipped out too quickly for him to snatch it back, and he felt his arm freeze in its place.

He cleared his throat clumsily. “I mean, uh, it happens, right? It’s just a thing. Not a big thing.”

She watched him some more and said nothing.

Terushima twitched. “Look, I never said I was a good… word person. I mean, don’t you have a type? Don’t most people?”

She nodded, which was a good enough answer, but he found that the longer her lips remained in a relaxed, very straight line, the less satisfied he was with this entire exchange. He’d never really felt much for the owner, but he’d jump at receiving the unexpectedly intimate smile she’d flashed, rather than maintain this stretch of seemingly unending tension. She’d spoken more  _before_  they’d gone to get tea, dammit.

“Okay.” He opened his mouth to let more noise out of it and not because he cared at all about her type. “So, what is it? Tall? Buff? Chiselled?”

There was a small, absolutely microscopic smile, but Terushima caught it, and felt vindicated.

“Silent and stoic,” she said. “Dark and stern.”

He frowned at her description. Right. Maybe he cared a teensy amount about her type.

“That’s absolutely nothing like me.”

“You’re not into glasses,” she said serenely.

“Yeah, but I mean, your eyes aren’t half bad.” He leaned closer to peer at them with all the smoothness one might find in a gay bar past two in the morning. “It’s just that your glasses make them look smaller.”

“Thanks.” Ah, the wry smile was back! Terushima was gaining ground by leaps and bounds, it seemed. “But I have them on to see, you understand.”

He grinned broadly. “Ouch. And you’ll get over my bad chatting skills after long exposure, don’t worry. I have the testimonials to prove it.”

There was a flash of something behind her eyes that vanished as quickly as it appeared, but he struggled for a way for him to ask after it without being insensitive. He kept his mouth shut with much difficulty and wondered if he’d let slip the struggle on his face.

“So, uh,” he ventured, “what do you study?”

Trust him to find the best and most original of questions to ask a non-date. It was a feat in itself that he hadn’t cringed the moment he’d actually thought that through. Opposite him, she twirled a finger around the handle of her teacup, expression unchanging.

“If you’re sure you’re interested, I could answer that. Or, we can talk about something you actually care about if you’d like. I don’t mind.”

He blinked, twice, just in case he missed something.

“Wow, you’re pretty snarky for someone who doesn’t like to go over twelve decibels.”

The corner of her mouth crept up. “Sometimes it slips out, I’m afraid.”

“It’s whatever.” Terushima shrugged and turn to gaze through the rustic, blown glass windows. It was growing later than he’d expected. “I babble when I’m nervous, so I can’t really rag on someone for whispering. I’m trying pretty hard not to run my mouth right now if you couldn’t tell.”

“Does that mean you’re nervous around me?”

“Uh.” Too late. Terushima had snapped around and immediately regretted ever meeting her eyes. She held them in her iron grip for a mercifully short moment before returning to trace the patterns etched onto the china. If he hadn’t been nervous before, he most certainly was now with her pensiveness. “Maybe,” he finished. “Are you?”

Nodding, she outlined a light blue chrysanthemum swirl.

“Yeah. I guess you don’t do this often, then,” he said. The cup must have been a lost masterpiece for how engrossed she was in following its design; Terushima received no indication that she had heard him. “I only mean like, not ‘cus you’re not pretty, but books and shit, y’know.” He threw in a hurried gesture at the small pillar of tomes next to her feet. “Library. Can be kind of a cockblock.”

“I do go out for tea, even if it’s by myself.” She nudged at a book with the tip of her shoe. It tumbled off the pile, sliding over the hardwood floor with a squeak. “And I don’t mind being alone.”

“For the quiet? Or the ‘I hate people, but I try to be polite anyway’ type?”

“A little bit of both.”

Not the best news, considering all things. Terushima, no matter how much he often dissociated with the human race when necessary, was still ‘people’, and the guilt at having dragged a victim along with his whims ate happily at his gut. However, he peered up and found her smiling, one braver than before.

“I like this place,” she confessed. “It’s very peaceful.”

The gnawing guilt relaxed its bite. “Why, because it’s full of old people?”

She hushed him, alarmed. “Shh. Don’t say that so loudly.”

Terushima raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure they already know they’re old without me breaking the news. Time to face the music, and so on.”

It took a moment for his social skills to kick in, and he cut himself off before his mouth took him on another merry ride. He’d never admit it willingly, but he held his breath held behind his teeth as he waited for the pin to drop, and only when she let out a small burst of laughter did he finally slump back into his chair.

“You’re a lot less shy than I thought,” he sighed.

“Well,” she said, with the dregs of laughter still staining her answer, “maybe you bring it out in me.”

Terushima opened his mouth to retort with something undoubtedly intelligent, but the wisp of curiosity that had dugs into him in the library corridor wound itself around his throat again. Perhaps it was a different shade of déjà vu, but it was all too easy for him to imagine that voice elsewhere, lower, breathier and so utterly incompatible with teacups and textbooks that anything thoughtful he was about to say withered up on his tongue.

“Maybe,” he said, a bit strangled.

She watched him closely from behind her frames. “I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable.”

“No. No, not at all.” He waved a hand to clear the figurative mist. “I just, uh, was reminded of something. It’s not important.”

“Alright.”

If Terushima could pause time and give himself a good punch in the face, he would. Anything but to return to the absolute silence between them at the very start. Now, he had possibly made it weird because today had been awfully weird in general, even in his opinion, so he lurched forward in his seat to give decent conversation another shot—

And he shouldn’t have worried. He should’ve forced himself to actually meet her eyes earlier, but she was smiling at him. With  _that_  smile, the one she’d given the owner so effortlessly. It took a few slow-motion moments where his brain needed to reboot itself again, but it slowly dawned on him that her brand of beam was anything but a lie.

There were crinkles in the corners of her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before, and her teeth were peeking out from behind curled lips, as if there was so much behind it that it was impossible to rein it all back. Terushima had her first impression burned so forcefully into his mind that he’d been completely thrown off by the startling openness in the girl who had accepted his offer for coffee with her arms wrapped around herself in an adamantium shield as she agreed.

He wondered if he looked anything like the owner earlier. With the twinkle in his eyes and all.

“You have a nice smile.”

“I do?”

“I—yeah.” Terushima hoped he wasn’t as red as he felt. “God, I sounded creepy, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t,” she assured him, but her cheeks were dusted a faint pink. “Thank you.”

“It’s the sort that makes people feel all warm and tingly, or something. I’m… not good at description.” Mildly worried by the silence and the ambiguous smile on her face, he floundered for a more flattering example. “Sort of like tea.”

His chest pumped a little harder with a rush of pride when her smile expanded into laughter. It felt like he had passed an invisible test when she pushed to face him fully and nudged her cup towards him. She rested a cheek on her palm, fingertips pressing soft dips into her skin.

“Thank you,” she said, all pliant and warm, and Terushima’s pulse danced in his throat. “Would you like to try some of mine? It’s very—what was it? Warm and tingly.”

It was impossible not to follow her laugh with his own. Feeling his face split in a confused yet bright grin, he picked up the cup and sipped, his eyes refusing to leave her face. He watched her watching him, comfortably, and savoured the trickle of warm spice and earth seeping into the edges of his palette.

He allowed the sensation to stretch down all the way to his toes, and when he placed the teacup back on its patterned saucer, he found himself perfectly unbothered by her silence; her gaze was words enough, and the tea sat quietly steaming between them, unmentioned.

* * *

Terushima offered to walk her back to her apartment, as all decent men should, and he soon found themselves returning the way they had come. He had instinctively chosen the place most comfortable, not quite realizing how far it was from literally anything related to their university, which included their local student village. Still, he was thankful for the glacier melted between them over shortbread cookies and homemade blends, for his steps came easier, and his arms had successfully unstuck themselves from his waist and were swinging perhaps a little too widely.

She held herself closely together still, but her hands were tucked underneath her books (which Terushima had offered to carry but she had declined) instead of across them, and he had learned in short time that it was as big of an indication of her mood as he would be offered.

To his own surprise, he didn’t mind as much as he thought he would. It only took a little more effort to pay attention to her smaller movements, and Terushima certainly didn’t mind paying attention to girls.

He kept them easily entertained with silly comments and commentary on passers-by, and he’d been pleased when she’d quip back, in her low volume, encouraged by the smiles that he would wring out of her. In his opinion, she was hiding far too much of a wicked humour, and it was his duty to drag it out from under the bed with as much ammunition as possible.

“Just past that corner,” she pointed with a finger, mid-story, “I’m sorry for the long walk back.”

Terushima shrugged a shoulder. “Doesn’t matter to me. I have to get back to the other side of the library anyway.”

“The other side?”

“The student pub,” he explained with a wide grin. “It’s half off wings tonight.”

He wasn’t expecting an answer, and she didn’t offer one, only shaking her head with a muted sigh. Perhaps she didn’t drink? Or, more likely, she just didn’t like being around people. That sounded about right. He gave himself a mental pat on the back for not being awfully wrong for once.

“Maybe if you mind the people more than the drinking,” he suggested as they turned the corner, “I could show you a pretty quiet bar downtown sometime. Whenever you’re up for it.”

“Tea and drinks, you’re quite the master of ingestible liquids.”

He had to hold his tongue very firmly after that comment, but he caught a glimpse of a sly grin when she spun to a halt in front of a navy coloured door.

“Still learning,” he grumbled, disappointed that he’d lost his chance at whipping out a dick joke.

The sympathetic look she gave him wasn’t quite as sincere as she’d hoped, but he took what he could get. On the steps of her building, they stared at each other for a solid minute, sifting through all the possible words they could say without undoing all their progress, and when he noticed her hands starting to wring around her armful of books, he gave in first.

“Thanks for coming out with me,” he said carefully, “considering how I kind of bullied you into it.”

She gave him a startled smile, bowing her head a little.

“Was it fun, at least?” He asked, hoping he didn’t sound as desperate as that question was.

“Yes,” she answered easily. His chest spluttered, unsure if it should speed up or slow down. “It was a lovely afternoon.”

“That’s good. …Interested in an evening next?”

She laughed again at that, and Terushima wasn’t worried about rejection this time. Not when he’d been, inexplicably, counting the number of laughs he’d managed to coax out of her so far. She threw her head back when she laughed, which he found quite easy to commit to memory.

“I’ll think about it,” she said, unable to hide her smile completely. “You have my number, Terushima Yuji.”

He looked smug, he was sure, but he waved the phone in his hand all the same. She matched it with a shy wiggle of her fingers and turned to push her key in.

Oh, but there it was. The snaking feeling, the scratching in the back of his mind and the sudden urge to juggle his weight between his feet—this was madness, utter lunacy despite being everything that he had based this date-abduction on—but if he was going to claw at his hair when he got back home anyway, he might as well make a fool out of himself thoroughly when he still had the chance.

“Hey—” he blurted before he could lose his nerve, and she turned around, curiosity clear on her brow.

Ignoring the flush on his cheeks, Terushima took a deep breath and hoped he didn’t sound as insane as he felt.

“I know this sounds kind of stupid,” he began, “but would you happen to know this club…?”


	83. Oikawa has an unstable s/o

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> aah i just read your character analysis thingy you just posted and i love them sososososos much (especially akaashi because well, its akaashi) and after reading the oikawa one and who hes most compatible with it just got me thinking what would happen if his s/o was the one to suddenly be more unstable than him or became more overwhelmed with what's occuring in their life? if oikawa is more of the unstable and insecure one in the relationship; what would he do when he sees his s/o acting up the s  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: ‘the same way’? Terribly sorry that tumblr evaporated the second part of your ask for some reason, but I got you. And it’s my first foray back into writing, so forgive me if it may fall slightly under expectations. I’ll do my best._

It came slowly when it did. As one would a child they saw every day, the changes came crawling, unnoticeable under the everyday bluster of activity and brief smiles and greetings and emojis through texts that revealed nothing more than how they felt about breakfast that day.

Although Oikawa’s strengths weren’t exactly in the art of social interaction, he found himself frowning more often at his texts, an uncomfortable feeling settling into his bones without any of the right words to express them. They tugged at his arms when he practiced his spikes, spending just a smidge more time practicing than he usually would, and he knew why. Something had displaced his usual eagerness to check his phone in the locker rooms or sneaking out to have a small snapchat battle. On the court was when his mind was the clearest, and even if he might be running away from something he’s not quite ready to admit, there was the unmistakable clarity that he  _was_  running away.

It felt like a small betrayal just considering asking Iwaizumi for help. A tiny admission of defeat.

_[6.12 – To:] Hey_

At least there was nobody else in the vicinity to see how his fingers had almost atrophied trying to type out three letters. He surely tried to ignore them to the best of his ability.

_[6.13 – From:] Hullo_

When his pulse calmed from its speed of light seeing his phone light up, Oikawa was surprised at how much he’d expected silence. It’s what he would have done, in her place. Silence, unwelcome notifications from the only person welcome to him, and the empty, echoing soundscape of late night practice.

It was the Captain’s privilege, of course, but nobody else on the team was fool enough to take his skill at face value. As they say, it takes a village, and Oikawa was lucky enough to have one.

He’d have to call upon their gracious souls for guidance and support during this difficult time, or something.

_[6.13 – To:] Dinner yet?_

He could feel her completely indifferent shrug through space and time.

_[6.14 – From:] Soon. You don’t have practice today?_

_[6.14 – To:] Didn’t feel like it. Just sitting outside._

_[6.14 – From:] Ok. Be careful you don’t catch a cold._

No emojis, no inappropriate ‘LOL’s, Oikawa felt as entertained as he would talking to his mother. Twice as nervous, perhaps, as he read her mood through those bland, careful words and it was a book he felt he couldn’t shut once he’d started it.

And he hadn’t been lying. He really was just sitting outside, almost all students long gone home by now, with the occasional member of the track team still doing mindless laps around the campus. He wasn’t worried about them, they always seemed to be completely zonked out on the inside whenever they jogged.

_[6.15 – To:] Got a jacket, I’m good._

_[6.15 – From:] Ok._

_‘Ok.’_

Cardinal sin of texting broken, just like that.

And that wasn’t the only think breaking.

_[6.16 – To:] Sometimes… okay. I can be prickly, and if you ever screenshot this I’ll know and I’ll end you, but I’m_

Despite it being the height of summer, their altitude still leant itself to chilly nights, and Oikawa’s trembling fingers hit the send button much earlier than he had wanted to. The joints in his thumb were creaking, and he was hunched over into himself like a man with severe stomach pain. He didn’t want to look up to see if anyone was giving him any funny looks.

_[6.17 – From:] I’m?_

_[6.18 – To:] here._

_[6.18 – To:] Fuck this, I’m coming over. Tell your mom?_

Oikawa almost jumped when his phone suddenly started seizing, her name flashing up with the harsh artificial light that seemed to shout itself into existence. This was hardly the first time he’d spent too long on the phone with her, but this time the longer he stared at the shaking green ‘accept’ button, the closer he felt to having his heart climbing up his throat and out onto the receiver, all blood and mucus.

With almost heroic effort, he picked up the call in a stern attempt at being a decent human being.

“Hey.” It was her voice, the same voice he’d had cracking him up, telling him to stop picking out his vegetables, calmly pointing out his bullshit. This evening it came so entirely lacking in substance it sent a shiver down his spine. “I don’t think my mom’s really up for guests right now, I’m sorry.”

“That’s… fine.” The words struggled against him even as he spoke them. “I guess it makes sense.”

“Too much?” She chuckled again, and Oikawa wanted her badly to stop. “Makes sense either way, if she wanted more guests, or none at all.”

“I… yeah.”

An uncomfortable silence blanketed the static between them. She made no move to break it, her heavy breaths occasionally breaking into a sigh poorly hidden, and it crackled into his ear.

“Would it be easier,” he ventured slowly, “if we met somewhere this weekend?”

“Instead of what? This?”

“Calling.”

“Now where would I be able to hide my dreadful expressions if we were face to face, hm?”

“They’re not dreadful.” Well, sometimes, but not in the way she thought. Oikawa sat a little straighter, his jaw set and his arms tense against his sides. “I’ll buy you crepes. Three, if you can eat them without puking.”

“Tooru,” she said, voice cracking and sounding infinitely more recognizable in that moment. “Bribery is not a functional game plan.”

“Sure. Watch me.”

“Do you really want me angry and crying in public? You’re going to be embarrassed to high hell.”

Oikawa broke into a wry smile, stretching out and propping his weight on a hand against the bench. The blisters dulled any pain the slatted planks might have had on his palm. “I’ll let you bitch at me only ‘cus you let me bitch at you on Fridays.”

“I give you a lot of free passes, admit it.”

“You do,” he said as carefully as he could. As warmly as he could; a rare, smothering blanket against the fire lapping at her heels and the ice prickling at the edges of her nerves. It was as much as he could offer, more than he’d usually dare and not nearly as much as he’d liked to give. “I’m trying to be a better person here, give me some credit.”

“Well,” she answered stiffly, “at least someone is, out of this whole mess.”

“Don’t— okay, as if telling you don’t is a good idea, but just give this a go. Come out of the house. Let’s take a walk in the park and forget that you’ll have to go back home at the end of the day.”

“No ‘let’s talk about it, you’ll feel better afterwards’?”

“Do I look like a good therapist to you?”

“No,” she laughed, lower, throatier, and much more contagious. Oikawa felt the knot in his gut begin to unravel itself, curling out of its protective hole and daring to wonder if he’d not fucked it all up as he thought he might. “But I’ll talk about it anyway, because I know you want to hear.”

“I won’t mind if you cry,” he insisted, and found that he meant it, even if the thought would have him terrified a year ago. “I’ll hide you against my sweater and you’ll have to come along when I grimace and have to go buy a new one.”

“Deal. And the crepes.”

“Yeah, alright. I’ll eat with you, if it means that much to you.”

“It does,” she grins almost audibly into the call, but Oikawa listens to it tire itself out and fade. “Okay, I’ll go. Against my better judgement.”

“Today,  _I’m_  your better judgement,” he declared, thrusting his chest out for absolutely nobody to witness. “Thank god it worked.”

“What worked?”

“Uh, nothing. Just talking to myself.”

“Mhmm,” she murmured suspiciously, but let it drop. “I have to go. I’m being called for dinner.”

“Good luck,” Oikawa muttered.

There was a brief snort, and the line went dead. Still, he held it against his ear for an extra moment, marvelling at how jarring it was to be the one being hung up on for once, the night otherwise silent except for the lingering voices in his head.

Despite it all, he understood her reluctance to meet, as he matched it beat for beat. What would it really be—a mistaken effort at finding middle ground, crass attempts at trying to be a good listener, impatient silences and cold shoulders that would last a week? Perhaps he would be the one to offer the cold shoulder instead, and she would—she wouldn’t pick up the phone, the next time he called.

A dozen different, miserable consequences churned impatiently in his mind, and he stared tiredly at the meaningless list of recent calls on his phone.

He’d start with crepes. He’d take her hand and criticize passer-by fashion from their brunch place. He’d sit through as much as he could, peeling back his ears for the first time in his life. He’d drag up every instance he’d been an utter asshole and try to be everything but that.

Maybe he couldn’t solve all her problems, and maybe he’d be terrible at it and make them ten times worse. But at the very least, he had stopped running, and his heart had stopped dragging its blunt nails down his throat each time he wondered if he had anything worthwhile to say to her.

He’d start with crepes and perhaps, just perhaps, he’d be able to end with making her smile again.


	84. Akaashi with sarcastic s/o on holiday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
>  
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> scenario for akaashi with a sarcastic s.o who likes to bicker with them about literally anything and it kinda gets on their nerves but its also extremely endearing? thanks!!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I fully believe that Akaashi is fully capable of channeling a little shit whenever he wants to. Which is quite often, imho. Hope you like!_

It’s a quiet day outside in the heady heat of mid-summer and the sun is muted graciously by the shroud of grey forms lounging above the mountain caps; the ground so warm from the morning sunshine that the raindrops almost hiss as they hit the concrete, one wave after another.

They’re the only ones still outside. In a stroke of luck, the café they had discovered the day before yesterday had remained open despite the warnings on the news channel the night before and the corroborating showers, but most of the chairs for outside seating have been tucked away underneath massive square-shaped umbrellas to preserve the delicate wood from soaking through.

Akaashi can feel the baffled, and occasionally disgruntled, gazes lingering on the back of his head from the wise, sensible patrons who had opted to sit indoors in such weather. It’s a grumpy, good-natured sort of gaze, gazes from people who can’t really be bothered to be particularly critical when there’s warm coffee tucked between their palms, a fresh set of newspapers sprawled over the narrow tables, and a comforting hum of steady rain against the tinted glass on an early afternoon.

He can taste the rainwater that’s splashed into his own cup of black coffee, but it’s too bland of a taste for him to consider buying another one and brave the grouchy looking owner who kept the store. He takes a quick sip, and with a hand that brushes away the moist bangs that plaster to his forehead, he watches her lean forwards on the slatted table, a yearning on her face almost as if to leap out into the dense shower and become one with the storm.

He keeps his phone tucked carefully underneath his jacket to keep it safe from stray droplets and lounges back against his stiff backrest, the scent of damp pine rubbing its tendrils into his back.

“If you stick your head out some more,” he cautions before taking another deep sip, “you’re going to look very interesting with only your face wet.”

He can see her shoulders shake once with a possibly befuddled laugh before she shrugs them.

“The dewy look might be in vogue. Think I’d look more interesting than you?”

He flicks his thumb up to move onto the next BBC article. “Hard to say. I can be a very interesting man.”

She cranes her neck to give him a glance-over: a navy shirt, just like the one yesterday, and oh! Happy coincidence! The same one as the day before that too. His pants have changed, she’ll concede. Sometimes. On days when she hides the rest. His watch, the same one he’d been wearing for the past four years—it being a graduation present is not a viable excuse for lack of fashion—matched the small coloured twine around his other wrist. She’d forgive that one though, considering she’d given it to him as a matching anniversary present when they were young enough to rely on allowances for gifts. He hadn’t taken that one off either, ever. Not even for showers, white-water rafting, nor torrential rainy days.

“Mhmm.”

They share a serene moment of silence before Akaashi puts away his phone and sighs, heavily, from the bottom of his old, weary heart. “I can hear you holding your breath all the way over here. Go on, say it. What’s wrong with my outfit today?”

She shrugs again, this time much more dramatically. Empires could rise and fall on those bony little shoulders with a drama that even Caesar would envy. “Nothing.”

“Is that so,” Akaashi says dryly. “Does that mean I can wear this again tomorrow without hearing another word from you?”

“It really depends on what sort of words,” she grins, and vaults a leg above the other to twist around just the right amount for Akaashi to catch her sharp profile against the drizzling background. “If you’re filing a complaint, I can always replace those tricksy words with other ones you might find even less appropriate.”

“Yeah. And what exactly is wrong with my shirt again?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” she repeats emphatically, “if you’re on a tight budget and brought a  _single_ shirt on holiday with you to Europe.”

“I see. So, if it’s anywhere but Europe—”

“Then you can wear that same shirt all week at home with the exception of Sundays when you have practice?”

“Possibly.”

“Ah yes,” she says, throwing her hands up in exasperation. He’ll give it another few minutes before they start drawing frenzied little diagrams in the air with her finger as a wand. “Let the scent of your armpits saturate into the corners of your shirt, and may it attract some unwitting females during mating season.”

Akaashi doesn’t give in to the urge to lift his arm to double check his armpit. He is a much better man than that, and an even better one when he shouldn’t be. He leans back and settles down with the comfortable knowledge that he’s washed this shirt quite thoroughly, and his go-to deodorant hasn’t failed him yet if she’s still willing to endure his presence.

“You like how I smell,” he mentions with a small smile, “but if you insist, I can always buy several more like this. To reduce my, ah, scent.”

He is an expert indeed in keeping a straight face after many, many years of practice with exasperating fellows around him, and he lets it rest on his face with ease when she squints at him, brows stretching between a raise and a furrow, and her blunt fingernails dig into the armrests to keep her uncomfortable twist in place.

It does make her look rather poised, with crossed legs and a carefully positioned arch to her back. Akaashi keeps his eyes politely on her face, but his peripheral vision goes off, as they say, and swallows every inch that he can. He wonders if it’s part of why she often chooses to be so prickly about everything, even in good humour; if he took that much care to look half as good when indignant about something, he’d probably instigate a lot more rows too.

For now, he thought, bringing his cup to his lips, he was content with simply admiring.

“You’re insufferable,” she says, rolling her eyes.

Akaashi pretends to be stung. “Me? Do I smell that much?”

She grumbles something under her breath, but she’s not quite taken her eyes off him just yet. He watches patiently as she comes up with a different approach to the problem. After all, they have all afternoon, as long as they’re willing to shell out a few more cups of coffee.

“I smell fine, don’t I?” Akaashi prods. She really brings out the worst in him, and deep down he finds it endlessly entertaining. “Unless you want me to wear more cologne? Should I change my shampoo?”

“No.”

“Oh, that’s great,” he says, turning his phone back on with his worst attempt at sounding enthused to date.

“It’s just…” she adds, and he hears her chair grate against the coarse ground as she tugs it closer to him. “It’s  _always_  blue. And always a shirt.  _I_  know you wash your clothes, but you can’t possibly expect that from anyone else.”

“Navy is a nice colour. What’s wrong with blue?”

“It reminds me of the thing with the friends on American television, but every day, all day.”

“Foster’s home for imaginary friends? He’s sky-blue.”

 _And much less fit_ , he thinks, but he is a humble man, not prone to lapses in judgement, so that comment stays obediently in the back of his mind as he swirls the last dregs of his coffee around, watching the course grounds dance in a storm. The poker face remains where it is, performing its role perfectly and any tells stay strictly around his lips in an unwilling upturn.

She’s far too busy rummaging around her mind for more analogies to properly notice, anyhow.

“Pictures,” she says triumphantly after a minute or two. Akaashi looks up from his sports news and gives this new attempt of hers another go. “Maybe I might be mistaken if you’re aiming for the time-traveller look, but you’d look exactly the same in all the pictures we take. New landmark? Same shirt. New city? Same shirt. New girlfriend? Same shirt.”

“New girlfriend?” He repeats with an eyebrow raised. She meets his look defiantly, her angled chin daring him to fire something back. “I wasn’t informed that I was in the market for a replacement.”

“Well perhaps you should read the book, then.”

“Have you?” He asks incredulously. “Have you really finally gotten around to it?”

There’s definitely a small twitch to her mouth as her eyes narrow, twinkling a bit at the corner. “Wikipedia is the new SparkNotes. My point still stands, time-traveller.”

Akaashi thinks about it for a while, tapping his fingers against his chin. “It’s not such a bad concept, really.”

“Your mum would be disappointed with those photos. You know it.”

“But you’re so very good at making me look attractive.” He rolls his eyes ever so slightly. Not enough to get him into trouble, but enough so that it’ll stop pushing at his eyelids for freedom. “Or is it all just me? Or maybe, is it  _all just this shirt?_ ”

“Okay, let’s test that.” she thrusts her arm out at him and beckons imperiously with two fingers. Her eyes flash as if daring him to do otherwise. “Hand over that shirt, I’ll try it on Tetsu the next time I see him.”

“As if he needs any help.” Akaashi does a full-on roll with his eyes this time, with a smidgen less amusement. He doesn’t want to think about it—as much as he loves his irritating as all hell friend—least of all in his own shirt, stolen unrightfully, and with  _her_  all over Kuroo. Alright, maybe she might not be, but the imagery is very much unappreciated all the same.

He swallows the rest of his cooled and watery coffee in a single gulp and rests it on the damp table with more focus than intended.

“Just my shirt? Does nothing else bother you more than my fashion this morning?”

She gazes at him with an inscrutable expression whilst Akaashi refuses to avoid her eyes, unyielding as he challenges her in silence for something else to nag about, another tiny little problem that seems almost impossibly insignificant underneath the madness that is drinking hot coffee on an equally hot and equally soggy noon. A slight breeze, however, has begun to blow somewhere between their bickering, grazing along the soft weeds that frame the banks of the Danube they face, and the rain has quietened into a gentler morning shower. It would be walkable, albeit only towards their temporary home considering they’d be soaked to the bone afterwards, and Akaashi almost considers asking her. Almost.

He waits to see if she’s got anything more to say that’s smart, snappy, and altogether exhausting on occasions.

She’s still staring at him with a spectrum of emotions flickering in her eyes when she speaks again, words tinged with a beleaguered sigh.

“If I think about it, then maybe this coffee. It doesn’t taste so good with rain. There’s this weird salty taste to it, but salt doesn’t evaporate, so it’s possibly entirely in my head.”

“A lot of things might entirely be in your head,” Akaashi replies, and he takes the side eye she shoots him with composure and grace. “Like how I’ve only got one shirt, ever.”

“You wore it yesterday. And the day before.”

“The washing machine is broken, love,” he reminds her patiently. “Our host hasn’t responded to me yet.”

“Alright, maybe not navy, but they’re all  _shirts_ ,” she insists. She twirls her empty cup around her fingers, seemingly unaware of how precariously it sits on her fingertips, and Akaashi can’t quite recall when she’d managed to finish it earlier than he. “I’m not saying you’re a boring person—” she shoots him a look heavy with meaning, “—but dressing to reflect that wouldn’t be a bad idea. On the contrary, in fact.”

They had been brainstorming in the rain for activities they could head for to replace their outdoorsy excursion to several palaces that day, but Akaashi thinks he’s got the right idea in mind. Never say that he’s an inattentive, inconsiderate partner. A shade petty when piqued, perhaps, but that all pales in the various hues of sarcasm she paints with when unoccupied.

Still, there is the way her nose scrunches up when she frowns, and the brisk way she rests her weight on her arms that has her stretched out into fine lines and soft edges that Akaashi keeps safely to himself whenever he watches her as inconspicuously as he can manage. It just about makes it worth it, he wagers, tossing his new idea back and forth in his mind, to listen to her furrow her brows verbally again.

“Thrilling, you say.” He murmurs. Her eyes follow with suspicion as he slides his phone into his jacket pocket, zipping it up all the way for protection. “Are you sure this isn’t just a ploy to get me to take off my clothes?”

“Not in public,” she says calmly, but the twinkle in her eye has returned, and a reluctant smile eked out of her. “Honestly, as if I’d share.”

His cheeks, despite their long familiarity, still flare up against his will and Akaashi tries his best to cool it down with a hand as discreetly as possible. Her smile only deepens, and he has to clear his throat to prevent his poker face from cracking.

He pushes back on his chair and stands up, abandoning his seat to the elements. When she doesn’t follow, he leans in with a brow elegantly raised and a teasing smile tickling the edges of his lips.

“Let’s go home.”

She looks at him as if he’s gone off his rocker. “The weather,” she says slowly, pointing up at the grey skies, “we didn’t bring an umbrella.”

Akaashi shrugs a shoulder. “That’s the point.”

“ _You’ll get sick_.”

“Not if we run,” he begins to count on his fingers, “not if we take a shower, not if we turn on the heating, and not if I make you a cup of hot chocolate after.”

Her eyes are almost sparkling, and Akaashi finds it a hopeless battle against falling right into them. “So, you’ve had the time to come up with this whilst listening to me all this time?”

“I can be a very interesting man,” he repeats sagely, and easily dodges the smack she aims at his arm. “Trust me.” He offers a hand to her, palm up, and a soft smile awaiting her answer.

Multitudes dance along the edge of her lips, and Akaashi watches every single one as they drizzle past the precipices of her cheeks and along the faint laugh lines blooming from her eyes. He doesn’t mind for as long as his arm doesn’t ache, and he could stand underneath a beige café umbrella with the splashes of rain drenching their trouser hems for a month if it meant that she would be able to turn that diamond edged glint towards him and place her palm in his.

She does, after a small shake of her head, and it takes only a minute or two. He laces her fingers together, slightly clammy from the wet, and draws her up against him. He can feel her warmth seep through his dreaded navy shirt, and when he tugs her closer, her hair frizzy from the weather tickles where he’s left the last two buttons undone.

“You wanted thrilling, remember?” He breathes lowly into her hair, and without another warning, he jerks the both of them out into the pouring rain. She lets out a startled yelp, but Akaashi barely flinches as he turns towards the street and pulls her along with him in a steady jog.

He swears he’s about two times slower than his usual morning jogs, taking her lack of exercise into account, but he’s still surprised when halfway there she begins to drag his arm back, clothes and hair utterly soaked and sluiced against her face with breathing as if someone had punched her in the gut.

Akaashi pauses, feeling the rain now concentrating on his shoulders, and leans against the railing along the river bank.

“Need a rest?”

“You—” she gestures vaguely in his direction, “— _yes_. Stop—looking so—”

“Composed?” He offers calmly. “Healthy? Not dangerously unfit?”

“ _Thank you_ , Keiji. We all know how you feel about my cardio.”

“Non-existent?”

Finally catching her breath, she gives him a good glare. “Yes. That.”

Feeling slightly in better humour, Akaashi lets his free arm fall and reaches out for hers. “I didn’t want you to get sick, but you love the rain.”

“What I said at the start,” she begins with a snort, but seeing his confidence slowly melt into a thin layer of concern, she leans into him, ignoring his jolt of surprise. “It’s too late now, so let’s not worry about it. I brought medicine.”

“So did I.”

“Well, then.” She’s a good foot shorter than him, but with a good firm tug, Akaashi allows himself to be pulled down enough for a warm kiss on his cheek. “Let’s do a power walk back instead.”

The image popping unbidden into his head makes him bark out a startled laugh, and he lets his smile stretch out as widely as hers does, all trembling and chilly and feeling his toes curl from the warmth that seems to pulsate from where their hands are joined.

When she throws her head back to whip her hair back from her eyes, there’s a moment where steals his breath away; his beautiful little storm witch. She lets her head fall forwards again and that moment passes, the only thing that lingers is an absent beat in his veins and a turbulent grin that reaches her eyes.

“I could piggyback you, you know,” Akaashi says when they resume at a brisk stroll, both completely drenched and his shirt pulling at his skin with each stretch. “I’d probably still be able to run faster than you with your feet.”

She sniffs. “I’m declining that on principle, you ass.”

Confident that nobody else will be able to spot him in the midst of the downpour, Akaashi laughs as quietly as he can, and lets the smile stretch as wide as it wants all the way back.

* * *

He did have something else planned for the rest of the day; he wasn’t lying by any means. It just so happened that it would come later at night, when the rain would die down, ready for a street-lit shopping venture for the very thing that she sniped so much about.

That is, he’d tell her, after they’d taken a shower, turned on the heating, and each with a mug of hot cocoa in their hands.

Neither of them was in a particular hurry to do any of those things when their door finally closed behind them. Akaashi had slotted her against the back of it immediately, letting his fingers trail their way slowly up the rises and dips of her sides. Their lights were forgotten, the only sound in the apartment a cacophony of the storm outside, their dripping hair and heavy breaths ghosting against each other’s mouths. He leaned in, languidly tasting the rain along her skin.

Despite her unfocused gaze and breath hot against the crook of his neck, she managed a warm laugh, and reached out with determined fingers to remove that dreaded navy shirt.


	85. Oikawa's s/o meets the family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> scenario for oikawa and kenma with an s/o who meets their parents for the first time? thanks!!!!  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I have no excuse. I’ve been tearing through period novels lately and really could not help myself. I hope you don’t mind overly much the amount of pointless fluff in all this! (Plus a small reminder regarding the one-character only announcement I made a while back. Very sorry!)_

From a distance where they had stopped at the foot of the long drive, the house appeared as if plated by thick strips of gold, gleaming against the knife edges of the sprawling estate, having been spread straight onto the walls still molten from the forge. It could be nothing but a simple trick of the brimming summer sunlight, but you found your eyes stinging all the same from the sharp reflection of the afternoon light.

You were early for tea, which  **OIKAWA** ’s parents had invited you to with a thick, scented letter in the post and few words to occupy said parchment with.  _My mother_ , he had said with a wry smile at the smooth, loping curves of her minced words,  _she’s never been one interested in beating around the bush._ He’d stretched out his hand dutifully for the invitation, and that was the last you’d seen of that lush stationery in your apartment.

Neither the lack of reminder nor Oikawa’s attempt at describing his family had managed to soothe your anxiety much. The ‘beating around the bush’ aspect reminded you far too much of your own mother: a woman acceptably interested in coating her chosen words with confectionary, but none too willing to spare someone’s feelings when there were simply a thousand more important things to be getting on with.

On the other hand, the prospect of meeting Oikawa’s father seemed to be a much less daunting encounter to anticipate. All the families you’ve had the pleasure to meet thus far at several dozen dinner parties and gatherings had their fair share of prickly, difficult sons. Along with the package often came exasperated fathers attached to determined wives in dazzling gowns. But perhaps the geniality of the gentry wasn’t the best thing to ponder when you were, quite literally, at the steps of your doom.

Oikawa had his left hand trapped in yours, but with his right he reached over to give you a lightning fast flick on the forehead. The tiny jolt of pain had you rubbing at the spot roughly until you thought you might have started growing tomatoes on your forehead, but when you looked, Oikawa simply raised an eyebrow and smirked.

“You were fretting so loudly I could barely hear myself think.” He lifted his encased hand and gave it a demonstrative shake. “See?” He said, as if you would consider seeing. “Almost dead from loss of circulation.”

On simpler, fledgling days, you would have sniped back at him with whatever danced on the tip of your tongue, but this was far from safety, far from home, and one never knew who would be keeping an ear open around the corner for new gossip. You refused to disgrace yourself to your hosts before even introducing yourself. “How unfortunate,” you said instead, and gave his hand a vicious squeeze. His yelp, as always, was rather satisfying, but with extra care you kept your smile at bay, stretching your face evenly into a serene, peaceful lie that would seem faultless in social situations. It would be good practice for later on in the evening, when there were no teasing comments but careful, calculated questions in their stead.

The driveway leading up to Oikawa’s family manor was newly paved with gravel and lay wide enough to fit four cars side by side. It was one of those dramatic estate roads, measured originally for large gatherings where gilded carriages would often require ample space for their ornamentation, glittering like pebbles of silver and starlight underneath the warm lamps that embraced the fringes of the drive. Those had been replaced too, in the place of wick and wax there were bulbs, unapologetically round and required only a single lucid groundskeeper to operate.

You wondered if his parents would be the type to have cocktails banned from dinner in the spirit of good manners, and would go on and on about the old, glorious days where they held balls every other week and when men were still required to wear wigs.

The image of Oikawa with a mound of ridiculous grey curls balanced above his forehead as he mounted his horse for polo was almost hysterical.

He shot you an incredulous look when you began to snigger under your breath. “I hope you’ve got enough sense to pick a more sensible time to go insane. Preferably  _after_  meeting my parents.”

Too late to back out now, you thought, this sort of procedure was a rather cementing one, and if he hadn’t realised you’d been bonkers from the start, it was his loss.

“You clearly haven’t pictured yourself on horseback with a grey wig before. You look like you’re riding into battle, as the Lord of the Squirrels as they nest on your crown.”

“Humiliating me in silence yet again,” said Oikawa, unimpressed. “As hilarious as that might be, I believe even somebody like Lady Parkhurst has opted for more productive hobbies to waste one’s time with.”

You nodded solemnly. “A paragon of virtue, Lady Parkhurst.”

“Undoubtedly.” A small grin had begun to creep along the curves of his lips, breaking the edges of his wide, sharp eyes into miniscule creases. “If the virtues had been a collaborative endeavour between Marie Antoinette and Salome.”

“It’s a terrible shame they’re not up for reinvention,” you said as you gazed up at the approaching marvel sat in the middle of the sprawling turnaround ahead of the manor’s entrance, “England would be a far more interesting place to spend the summer.”

The drive had been deceptively short with its twists and turns through heavily wooded grounds, and the marvel approached quickly indeed. It had been but a speck of white from the distant front gates, and now stood almost at its base, it stretched out far wider than it had appeared, and shone. It was a fountain, immaculately kept and slightly incongruous with the otherwise neat and austere surroundings, carved out of white marble and had five nymphs dancing precariously with ornate pitchers spilling water that dazzled in the unyielding light of day. Its spectacle was so magnificent that you wondered if it hadn’t been designed at all to match the estate, maybe stolen from some lost garden in Buckingham Palace itself when the guards were off-rotation.

“Rather gauche, isn’t it?” Oikawa stood with his hands in his pockets looking rather forlornly at the nymphs who were incapable of retaining the contents of their marble pitchers. “You’d think some impoverished Princess lived here with only a great hulking fountain for an heirloom.”

“It’s very beautiful,” you said diplomatically. You spoke no lie—it was indeed a magnificent fountain, a masterpiece of craftsmanship that so happened to be sitting in the middle of some grey gravel and surrounded by grey fencing, having a rather grey day all round. “It certainly matches the house.”

Both of you took a few steps back to behold the manor in its entirety. Its walls were every bit as spotless as the fountain, and the brightness with which it glistened in the height of summer put the damp nymphs to shame. Its frame stood steadily on its foundations, modest Georgian rectangles a counterweight to its light, beaming colour and gilding which seemed to be pulled straight from Versailles. An unconventional mixture, but undeniably striking and beautiful, as if formed for pilgrims who had trekked the disappointing road of purgatory to reach the gates of a surprisingly affluent and fashionable St. Peter with a soft spot for azaleas.

“It’s very… French.”

“If they could uproot the whole thing and have a chateau set in its place, they would.” Oikawa spoke witheringly, undoubtedly thinking of his very modern and very English house in London, but there was a fondness hidden underneath the layers somewhere, the fruit of a childhood surrounded by swathes of angelic white and risqué French busts. “They never were fond of Victoria’s sepulchral colour schemes, but I must give them credit for preferring French gardens. English ones always appear as if handled by an uninspired gardener with an aversion to shears.”

“Sounds rather like your gardener counterpart.” You grinned through the hefty roll of his eyes and took the hand that he proffered.

“Let’s get a move-on.” Oikawa straightened his clothes and set your hand gently into the crook of his arm, every part the well-mannered son that appeared only around his family. “It’s better inside, thank heavens. Much less of this Belle Epoque business.”

You followed him obediently as the mention of ‘inside’ had your personality darting away in some dark cave and had its absence replaced with nerves. It was nothing you hadn’t done a thousand times, you instructed yourself, these white steps are the same in all the calls you’ve paid, and the etiquette would not have changed overnight. Oikawa had laughed at you the night before as he watched you run through every rule in your head with a stony face. It was a small mercy that his parents had not decided to draw out the entire household to welcome you.

The massive doors opened from the inside before Oikawa could touch the bronze door knocker, and where you had been expecting a butler, or even a footman, you were surprised instead by a smart and impressively well-dressed man that looked far too athletic for a man who opened doors for a living. He wore a warm smile despite his slightly harried air and observed you only once before ushering you in with a hand.

Oikawa, the great pain, had the audacity to look bored whilst your pulse raced like a man with his buttocks aflame.

“Hullo. Where’s Claude?”

“Your mother sent him out on some errand. Apparently, she didn’t think tea for her son warranted any time wasted on unappreciated ceremony.” The man raised an elegant eyebrow, and in that moment, he looked so very much like Oikawa with a calmer disposition that it almost felt like a glimpse into the future. “I hope I’m an acceptable replacement for the young master, who does not keep his lunch appointments with his long-suffering parents without his fiancée’s involvement.”

There was a twinkle in his eye as he glanced over at you with a conspiratorial smile. His eyes were a vibrant hazel, with flecks of gold licking at the edges and you almost choked your way through your next breath as you realised your folly in relying on Oikawa for introductions and etiquette. You lifted your hand and attempted a self-introduction as smoothly as you could without betraying your alarm.

“None of that Lord and Lady formalities here, my dear,” he insisted, your hand still grasped softly in his in a greeting interrupted, “as you can see, silly things like manners and ‘Good afternoons’ do not plague our Tooru’s mind. You’re very welcome to call us by name, both my wife and me. We’ve been so very keen to finally meet you.”

Your mother would probably be piping from her ears if she knew that you were addressing Count and Countess with their names as if you’d been close friends for decades. Oikawa, however, looked rather smug where he stood, as if having his point proven. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well,” you replied quickly, “I must apologise if I have proven rather elusive—it was certainly not my intention.”

“Of course not, of course not. I can recognise my own son’s handiwork quite clearly in all of this, not to worry.” The Lord of the house almost sparkled with good humour, and he held without a doubt all the charm that Oikawa had effortlessly inherited and exercised almost manically. “Shall we move to the patio? It’s far too hot for a garden tea, unfortunately, but it shall be quite manageable in the shade overlooking it.”

“French gardens,” reminded Oikawa. “The only acceptably French part of this miniature France.”

“He says that,” his father remarked as he led the both of you through the white and mint panelled halls, the grand staircase stretched in unchallenged glory past the soaring ceiling, “but you should have seen the pride on his face when he used to bring his Eton friends to our house for excursions. You’d thought he’d transformed into a peacock in broad daylight.” He laughed, a low vaulting sound that drifted through the empty halls like honey. “They thought you terribly  _a la mode_ , didn’t they? Once they got past the driveway, anyhow.”

“If I may ask,” you said carefully, “why indeed the driveway?”

“The way it is, you mean?” The three of you approached the sprawling windows that led to the gardens, framed with a while that glistened like pearl with the trick of the light and had pale cream flowers and vines etched into the wood that gave it an illusion of bloom in winter. “You’ll have to ask my wife about that,” he said, and gave the double doors a sound push so that they swung out into the open without a sliver of noise. The balcony above hung above the sweeping veranda, supported by sturdy roman pillars smothered with lattices of vines and greenery, far out enough that the light was withheld from washing over the house once the curtains were pulled back. Two steps outside you caught sight of a small but elegant arrangement of tables and china where the west curved towards the flowers. Oikawa’s father could not resist a gentle smile at the sight of his wife, the mistress of the house who waved her fan so slowly that the only wind to be generated, if possible, would have to be divine. “There she is, barely pretending to be patient. Tooru, you really should be more considerate of your mother. The days go by too slowly for her without either of her sons around to challenge her sanity.”

Oikawa laughed lightly and strode forwards towards his mother with your hand still tucked into the crook of his arm so that you had to balance your sudden leap forward in case you stumbled and fell flat on your face. “We’re preserving it,” he called back to his father, who followed behind you both at a leisurely pace. “You can’t deny there’s barely enough to go around as it is.”

From where she sat, his mother calmly closed her fan and tapped it elegantly on her palm. “You might want to repeat that a bit louder, darling, in case I might have missed your shout.”

Oikawa swept in to give her a quick peck on the cheek which she accepted with barely a blink. “Hello, mother. You’re well aware that you have the hearing of a very determined hawk, which the passage of time has ever striven in vain to touch.”

“I see in your absence you’ve been honing your skills of being as rude as politely possible.” She turned to you before he had the time to formulate a retaliation. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you dear; I’m afraid I’ve simply heard too much about you to withhold an invitation any longer.”

She spoke without malice or suggestion and her arms widened in welcome. From anybody else you would have taken such a statement with a combative response, but she watched with a kind warmth that sat quietly behind her eyes, intelligent and green underneath her wide-brimmed hat. Oikawa too, despite seeming a little disgruntled that he’d been interrupted, darted his gaze between the two of you with poorly disguised anticipation. There needed barely a guess whose favourite he was in the family.

“The pleasure is mine entirely; your beautiful invitation was a delight to receive.” From behind you Oikawa pulled out a seat when his mother gestured with a meaningful blink and you slid into it as neatly as possible with minimal shuffling. Her husband, having taken his time in catching up, bent down to press an affectionate kiss on his wife’s cheek and took his place beside her, a piece of toast and a butter-knife already in hand.

With the sun balancing on tender rays along the tips of the trees that settled into the grounds extending from the fringes of Oikawa’s family estate, there was a soft crimson that permeated the limitless stretch of blue on a rare, clear English sky. And when the scattered light blew in from where Oikawa’s parents had turned their backs, it graced them with a soft glow that revealed flecks of grey woven into their dark hair, their faces calm and serene. When Oikawa’s father leaned against his wife to brush away a stray crumb from the tablecloth, you wished you had the ability to paint this exact second in time where the light was unearthly and the garden maze framing the glass table, and where love seemed to be timeless, reassuring, and painfully unattainable.

A hand rested on top of yours where it lay open on your lap, and you glanced at Oikawa who seemed to have an abundance of emotion rippling wildly across his face. Gently, you flipped your hand over and wove your fingers through his for whatever support you could offer and returned his squeeze.

His mother was the first to break the silence, her smile curling against her pale cheeks and weathered eyes. “Tell me,” she said, placing a scone on her plate, “how did the two of you meet?”

“Well, I’d just been knocked off a horse when she, an utter stranger, marched over and began to shout at me about something or another.”

A familiar sentence, one that usually precluded one of his more wicked, whimsical moods. His mother had left her scone untouched, letting it cool in the late breeze with bottomless patience lining her posture and his father had stopped splitting his time between observing the both of you and picking out his favourite angel cake slices. In fact, he had both his elbows casually drawn above the table and the faint wrinkles on his angled, educated face trembled with amusement he was attempting to disguise.

When both parents glanced at you for a comment or justification that any normal person would scramble to share, all you could offer was a weary shake of your head and a poor imitation of a wry smile. It wasn’t the first time Oikawa had grown into his story as he rambled on, and each attempt at interrupting his fantastical train of thought always resulted in some variation of a verbal spar—so as a matter of fact, you’d rather he spin his own legendarium of your meeting rather than appear a sore loser with a proclivity for frantic excuses to hide the truth that you were an unstable, terrifying witch that shouted at random people on Wednesdays during polo. What a catch indeed!

Oikawa, however, grew pleased with the silence and decided that was prompting enough for him to elaborate. “I’d never met her before, you see, but it so happened that I knew her brother, who’s a semi-regular at the Ham Polo Club. It was only practice day, Wednesday afternoon after a ghastly drizzle that did nobody any favours once they’d been chucked onto the muddy pitch, and I was riding somebody’s fresh mare for a quick, harmless lap around the field as one does. Someone a few feet away from me was attempting to chuck his polo stick to someone near the seats, but it was slippery with the rain.” He paused with one eye open for dramatic effect. “Ended up hurtling straight at me and knocked me clean off my saddle.”

“And the shouting?” You took a careful bite of an iced confection. It really was rather good. “Don’t forget the part where I’m a raging lunatic with breeches on marching towards you like one of the four horsemen.”

“I knew you’d see it my way sooner or later,” Oikawa laughed and winked. “She was shouting fairly loudly, mind you, with a very hoarse, bellowing voice, but everything was rather brown. From the mud.”

“I promise I hadn’t been shouting at him, despite the rather unbecoming circumstances.” You hoped you sounded sincere enough that his parents wouldn’t be swayed by the ardency of Oikawa’s tale, no matter how disappointing truth could be. His mother, at the very least, did not hesitate to share an understanding smile with you. Her husband, on the other hand, looked as if he was about to soil his pants from laughing. You were unsure if that was to be a promising prospect on your behalf. “It was my brother who had ineptly thrown his polo stick in the completely wrong direction,” you added, “and I was shouting at him for almost killing a man with a pole.”

Oikawa’s smile was wolfish. “Don’t deny it, you were impressively miffed with me too.”

“Only because you could have  _dodged_  and saved yourself a pelting in the face if you’d only been able to tear your eyes off the Honourable Miss Dancy’s birthday décolleté.”

Your biscuit tasted especially savoury when Oikawa stared at you, slightly taken aback. “Oh,” he said. “I thought the light rain would’ve hid me well enough.”

Perhaps, if everyone in the near vicinity had suddenly lost the use of their eyeballs. “I wouldn’t fret,” you grinned through a sip of your tea. It was a most delightful balance of Indian aromas and something floral; undeniably a home blend. “I was under the impression she rather enjoyed it.”

“Clearly the years have given your personality a wide berth,” his father said, grinning and dabbing away the tears of laughter underneath his eyes with a handkerchief.

His wife cast him an enigmatic look and offered him her own embroidered kerchief. “I daresay that your father could only have enjoyed this story more if you had been hurled through the stormy skies and knocked out utterly cold.”

“Oh, Lord,” he said from behind a face full of fabric, “I would have sold an heirloom portrait to watch that.”

All the etiquette training in the world could not have stopped your face from breaking into a smug and utterly unladylike grin. Oikawa’s mother had not been looking your way, but a wayward glance had caught his father’s eye, who was watching you with an interesting mixture of intrigue and approval. Oikawa himself, on the other hand, had his previous sneaky humour replaced with a mildly put out frown and was tapping his fingers irritably on the tablecloth.

You didn’t miss the way his mother’s eyes glittered with a learned fondness as she took in his pout.

“There are worse things in the world than being made a fool of, Tooru,” she said gently, but not without amusement. Oikawa continued frowning, unmoved. “Luck has, in the end, managed to find its way to your side once more, has it not?”

He tilted his head to glance at you, his chin up high and his mouth pressed into a thin, considering line, and all the while you froze in your seat, the wave of anxiousness washing over you again as you turned his mother’s comment over and over again in your mind until it began to wear out at the edges. There must have been something in those refreshments; an extra sprinkle of this and that into the mixture to strip any unwitting consumers of their defences. It had nothing to do with the weather either—the traitorously peaceful clouds that flittered here and there in varying shades of pinks and purples, whilst the nerves in your throat have reminded you in their unwavering greyness that you’ve been made far too comfortable. That Oikawa’s father’s camaraderie had been earned but for a second, over an unflattering story of his own son, and that his mother had only been sharing understanding with you, and not approval.

Not to mention, luck was a notoriously fickle thing, and could be applied to almost any situation and person. Someone caught out with a cold before a dreaded dinner would be just as lucky. With a fortifying gulp you pried your gaze back up to meet the mistress of the house, and although her lips were obscured behind a tasteful teacup, the expression behind her luminous green eyes unflappable. You had to remind yourself that this was not a war—you were not required to match her moment for moment to assert your dominance of any sort; when you turned away to focus on something else, you found that the sandwiches no longer seemed appealing to you.

Lost in your thoughts, you were startled by Oikawa’s voice interrupting the quiet.

“Anyone with half a brain would know not to trust luck.” When your mouth remained parched and your head lowered, he slid a concealed hand into your lap and grasped your knee with enough force to have you bite down on your lip to hold back a sound. “There was nothing lucky about it.” Oikawa turned in his seat, swinging his legs sideways to stare at you fully in the face with a solemn, stern expression. This one you were not afraid to meet. “I worked damned hard to wrestle down my first impressions which were equally horrified and fascinated by the angriest figure I had ever laid eyes upon. After that, I worked damned hard again to squirm my way into her schedule, to befriend her reluctant brother, to pick apart her preferences and somehow squeeze myself into every category conceivable. You were dastardly difficult to reach, as you know perfectly well, and let’s not pretend we weren’t rather battered by the end of it all.”

“…Right,” you said faintly.

He still hadn’t released your knee, and only leaned further forward with absolutely no intention of doing so. In the back of your mind you wondered if he had completely forgotten that he had an audience, probably watching every incriminating move with exhilaration. Oddly enough, he seemed slightly irritated at something.

“So,” he added severely, “after all this hard work, you deserve to be here as much as I do.” His fingers squeezed tightly around the bones of your knee once and it vanished. He jerked away to watch his mother, who was silent. “God knows you’ve earned it by putting up with me.”

Dismay had dragged everything two times slower than reality. You could feel your muscles stretching as you slowly tugged your head around to observe Oikawa’s wordless parents, despite the fact that you were moving as quickly as you could. Their faces were picturesque and betrayed nothing, but their eyes blazed with a spectrum of emotions as they matched their son’s challenging gaze.

Finally, after what seemed like several hours underwater with muted senses, his father broke into a bracing yawn and stood up languidly, arms stretched above his neck. A smile flickered and disappeared discreetly.

He held his hand out to you, waist bent at a gentlemanly angle, and you took it numbly as you summoned strength back into your joints. “Would you like to join me for a tour of the house?” He asked, lips twitching and cast a quick look at his wife. You dared the same, and although Oikawa’s expression had not wavered, his mother’s had relaxed into a calm, affable smile that differed greatly from the sociable one she had offered you at first meeting. “They may need some time to, ah, understand each other.”

From behind you, Oikawa let out a loud snort, and some of the tension eased from your rigid spine. His father waited good-naturedly for the tired smile you finally relinquished.

“I’d love to.”

“Try not to embarrass me overly much, as entertaining as it may be,” Oikawa called over by the time you had reached the great French windows once again. “I’ll wring all the details out of both of you later, you know.”

Laughing, most of the colour returned to your face as his father watched with a dancing grin. He tugged you across the threshold before you could reply and mimed a shushing motion.

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

You nodded seriously. “I swear, upon all the virtues. Even the extremely odd ones.”

Gamely, you took the elbow proffered you. With one last peek at your lover left by the emerald gardens, you swept alongside your guide into the house with renewed confidence and long strides, determined not to let Oikawa Tooru down.


	86. Suga, Bokuto, Tanaka, and Kuroo's s/os saves them from a car crash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Original character death
> 
> Prompt by anonymous:
>
>>   
> could i request scenarios where suga, bokuto, tanaka, and kuroo's s/o pushes them out of the way of an oncoming car that runs the red light while they're crossing the road and she gets hit instead? you can have free reins with the endings/result; i'm just in the mood for some crying, scared angst. ^^; thanks so much, love! <3 <3 <3  
> 
> 
> _Busybody comments: I opted to do shorter scenarios but for all of the characters you asked for, as an exception to my new announcement. Although I’m sad that I couldn’t write long bits for all of them, I thought this was brilliant for some practice on grief, and I’m sorry if they’re… if they make you sad. I hope you enjoy them all the same._

_“They say that time heals all wounds,_

_but that presumes the source of the grief is finite.”_

 

* * *

 

When they come to him, five hours later, the only thing they want are his words.  **Suga**  meets their eyes, unafraid, when he already had a foot dipped in fear, his other drawing circles with its sticky grey residue.

Their lips move, eyes beady and unwelcoming. Shoulders held rigid and feet a shoulder apart. Suga offers them nothing.

They begin with two officers, both women, one younger than the other, but both equally grim. They speak to him slowly, stretching out their words as if describing death to an infant, and Suga stares emptily at them in return as they turn their head this way and that in slow arcs in a mimic of the circle of life.

When there’s no sign of recognition, the older one frowns, hand impatient on her hip and she turns to her partner, whispering so loudly that she needn’t have bothered unless her audience were all deaf. Barely a foot away, Suga picks up every word they say, listens to the emotionless content and remembers none of the words.

The younger officer gives him a critical look, takes the arm of her partner and vanishes past a corner. With nothing else to care about, Suga’s gaze trails after them.

Two hours later, they reappear with her parents. Following behind the two officers, they’re crying, glistening smears all over their blotchy faces. They fit right in with the other people loitering about in the trauma ward.

Her mother is the first to touch him. She holds him by the shoulders, her fingers digging into the dips of his tendons, surrendering to the urge to shake the facts out of him like a piggy bank. She can’t find the words to say either, and continues to sob silently while she shakes him, and Suga counts the number of times she shudders violently enough for the tears to spill from the creases along her eyes. Her father looms behind his wife, kind face ashen and uncaring when he asks Suga with a trembling voice if he could speak to the officers.

Suga shakes his head slowly. He can’t find a single reason why he would open up to anyone. He can’t find a single thing worth saying that wouldn’t put the truth to shame. A dozen witnesses’ words should be enough—an objective truth that they could put on paper and leave him be.

Her mother drags him into a hug. Her spindly arms are deceptively strong, and those pinching fingers migrate around his shoulders until they’re crushing him bone by bone. She hangs onto him like one would a buoy; uninterested in comfort unless it’s a life raft, and Suga doesn’t move an inch. She’s trying to float on a sinking ship, but he says nothing; it isn’t as if in saving her, he could save himself.

Strategically positioned, the older policewoman peels the mother off of him with her nails and a flex of her arm.  She frowns at Suga disapprovingly, but steps back to let her younger partner hand him a notepad and pen. She suggests he might prefer to write, if he can’t bring himself to speak. As if instead of traumatized he’d just had his voice knocked out of him.

Suga takes both items into his hands and rubs a thumb over the dented ball-pen. All four bystanders around him watch on with such intensity that Suga has to wonder if watching people scrawl down their feelings has become a national sport when he wasn’t watching. They’re waiting for him to drag the ink over the faded lines just like spectators cheering for the lions to be released into the arena.

She’d probably be unimpressed if he got himself arrested out of spite. He counts the letters as he writes, a miserable bullet-point at the beginning of each sentence. He doesn’t go over five lines, and ten words for each one. His heart isn’t a collector’s item, and having more testimonies isn’t going to win them any more compensation.

When the younger policewoman takes back the pad and pen, she inspects his descriptions with the same frown and mutters something to her colleague.

They all leave him at once, having extracted what they wanted. Suga hears from just at the edges of his range that they’ll be back in a few days, looking for a longer testimony. He disposes the fact from his mind five minutes later.

\- - -

At home the next day, his mother knocks on the door and twice she calls his name as if it would break from sound alone. Although it’s someone familiar here for something more than facts and answers, Suga can’t bring himself to care. His mother lets herself in anyway when there is no response.

Holding a page from the local newspaper limply in her hand, she lays the obituary on his lap. The relevant section is circled in pencil in a hurried job to ensure Suga knows exactly who it is he should be reading about, in case he might have forgotten. How very kind.

“They’ve invited you to speak at her funeral,” his mother says. “You’d go after her mother.”

She waits for an answer but Suga has none to offer; he imagines the crowd of people who had never really cared about her or her laughter but seeming to flock to her funeral as if her ghost would pass judgement on them. His mother waits a few minutes but leaves him be after a long silence, pity free on her face.

Alone, the walls seem to watch him all the more intensely than if they had eyes. His furniture presses in, stealing more of the hollow room with each inward crawl.

Still, Suga sits. The compression cannot reach him. His own walls press back the way he has practiced, and in his mind, he fights effortlessly for the meagre space to breathe in his own room.

By the time the crack of light through his curtains dim, Suga approaches his desk and takes a seat in his cushioned chair. There is a dent where he sits on it each day, and his stationery is lined up neatly for his right-handed convenience. He pulls out the nearest notebook from his stack, flips past the finished homework, and settles his pen on the first blank page it reaches.

When the first sentence comes out rigid and ugly, Suga almost breaks the page crossing it out in rapid lines. He tries again, picking out words in his head before they reach his hand, but none of them fit. ‘Condolences’ and ‘memories’ are treated with the same harsh slashes.

By himself and with onlookers that have no hands, no eyes and no opinions, Suga brings himself to try a little harder, yet each word that he selects from the jumble of a thousand combinations sounds artificial, unforgiving and disingenuous. All the other combinations that aren’t so, dig their hooks into the sides of his throat and there isn’t a single sound that Suga attempts to make that doesn’t drown him as quickly as they rush up from the pits. His hand stops because the letters have become hideous, scrawling things, and because the next words at the ready are waiting for him to falter.

Suga turns to another page, flipping from the back of the book, and gives in to the sour feeling in his stomach that has no interest in his stoicism and dry eyes.

He writes his eulogy. He is conscious of every sentence, every sentiment—even his handwriting. The feelings don’t roar nor spill out like they do for everyone else—he has to push them through, rolling his tongue around the invisible words that he takes care to not say aloud in case they start to slither out and wrap around his throat until it’s swollen, blue and motionless on the evening floor.

Quietly, secretly, Suga also writes his love letter. A tiny, worthless love letter for a great, dead love; a great grief and a great, grey feeling that threatens to smother all the other greats into a perpetual feebleness. He writes so that he isn’t smothered before he can remember what his love was like in his chest, before his head breaks apart all the jagged pieces from its walls and places into a safe box where Suga can’t ever cut himself on. He writes to recall all the lighter moments, the heavier evenings and the ridiculousness of moments that had never made any sense in the present. He lowers them all down with cautious fingers, smoothing their edges until the ink stains his fingers.

He can feel it—this will be his last time speaking, writing, singing and thinking of her with his chest split in half and his blood beating in his ears. It doesn’t bring him any more joy than ordinary memory usually does, but this is a love letter, and Suga’s letters are always intended for the person on the other end of his mailbox. It has never mattered to him how he feels, and today the least of all.

He decides on the last sentence, and when it is complete, he folds it into meticulous quarters and slips it into his bag. This letter’s mailbox is a far one, past a fire and beyond a cliff for its charred little remains, beyond the reach of any person who wants his story, his life and his pain for their funeral where tens of people who haven’t even heard her laugh will congregate like vultures.

He’s ready. Suga takes a deep breath, closes his heart, and begins another speech.

This second piece he hands later to his mother downstairs. She is astonished to see him, relieved and too worried to have sat down for longer than five minutes. “Why are you giving me this?” She asks, eyes wide and offering the bit of paper back to him. Suga faces her slowly and declines his invitation to the funeral.

A week later, Suga leaves home for a short trip. The school lets him be, and his mother simply waves him goodbye with her lip trapped between her teeth. His father has her face tucked in the crook of his neck, and stares helplessly at his son.

Up until the moment Suga’s feet point him either right or left on the empty street, he has no particular destination in mind. The journey has never mattered less to him when he walks with the understanding that if he were even to cover a million and a half miles in his lifetime, he will carry the weight of her, gladly, on his shoulders until there is nothing left of him but dirt and dust.

For now, Suga suffers only the small burden of his folded soul in the second pocket of his backpack, and heads for the end of his mailbox, ready to burn.

 

* * *

 

 **Tanaka** hurried down the aged pavement, flanked by two streaks of trees and cluttered foliage. Twice he had clipped the tip of his shoe against a crumbling stone, but he only clutched the parcels in his arms tighter against his chest and picked up the pace. The horizon beyond the tree-tops was beginning to deepen; the earthy tangerine colour of impending dusk had slowly given way for the diffusion of blue into its vibrancy, and soon, if Tanaka didn’t hurry, he would find himself swallowed by the shadows that even streetlights couldn’t touch.

There was a healthy layer of brittle leaves that blanketed the path ahead. From what he could notice, there must’ve been few visitors to walk along this mountain trail in a long while. After all, nothing remarkable waited at the summit except for a view over his town, which one could find much easily on a lower hill.

However, this had been the one she had chosen, the one she had frequented, and the one Tanaka had brought her ashes up to long ago and scattered before the winds could die down.

If he had a choice, he wouldn’t have chosen this day to have anything scheduled. There was enough racing through his mind without the pressure of other people, all convivial and pleased to see him and waiting to hear his stories. But he would be there for Noya’s celebration—just this one exception—even if he would be struggling to make it on time. Tanaka wasn’t sure he could take disappointing two people at once—and the fact that neither would blame him, both being far too good to do so, stung even more.

He reached a small ledge that jutted out directly below the sharp summit without losing much breath. It was a narrow stretch of soil that allowed only three people at most to rest on it at a time, and unsupervised the weeds had begun to spring out from all four corners, stealing what space they could. Carefully, Tanaka set down his jar of flowers and his other two parcels down against a flat rock and tugged on a pair of gardening gloves. It wasn’t an easy job, with his waist bent and legs squashed together as he yanked out fistfuls of weeds and wild daises. They weren’t muscles he used regularly, and no matter how often he soaked up the sweat that pooled above his brow, there always seemed to be more grime and dirt that came from his gritty gloves. However, he took no breaks until they were all gone and, in their stead, a small mound of discarded foliage which Tanaka kicked off the side of the mountain in one go.

It looked much better now, more recognizable and much cleaner, as she would have liked it. Tanaka took a seat cross-legged in the centre, and slowly unravelled the packages by his feet.

It made no sense at all to be careful with them, as they were meant to be left on the mountainside for her, free to be battered by the winds and rains, but Tanaka’s hands shook all the same when he pulled out a thick, parchment-like envelope and a small photo album that sat snugly in his palm. When he had been putting it all together, the stack of notepaper seemed to grow uncontrollably, scribbles running rampant across the never-ending pages and he had been worried they wouldn’t fit into the envelope he had made himself. Now, they seemed so disappointingly small, barely even larger than the rock he’d rested his flower jar against, and not for the first time, a sense of overwhelming shame took over him.

She hadn’t liked flowers very much, either. They looked too much like aliens, she’d said to him a long time ago, nose wrinkled as Tanaka laughed over his embarrassment when he’d asked if she’d like some roses for Valentine’s day. They wilted far too quickly and attracted too many bugs. If she had been a flower, she’d insisted, she’d not very much like to stay in someone’s home with her legs cut off either. Tanaka had given her chocolates instead, and she’d appreciated those much more.

Chocolates were much less suitable for the outdoors, however. He couldn’t very well leave the packaging and all for a year, knowing that it would simply blow away into the distance and become litter for somebody else to solve. And if she had reached his age, most girls—or women, now, he supposed—would have received dozens of bouquets and hydrangea clusters from relations and colleagues. It was what would happen, what  _should_  have happened, and Tanaka wanted her to have everything that everyone else did. Even things she disliked, he needed her to have the chance to dislike them, to complain about them, to toss them into the bin of her own volition with her wrinkled nose and curled lips.

Sometimes he felt incredibly selfish, like when he set the flowers down beside him, overlooking their neighbourhood. The flowers he’d chosen were his own favourites, in his favourite colour. The jar he brought them in had been a gift from his sister, and he’d thought they matched. The photo album he had brought was small but thick, and filled with activities he enjoyed, with moments that he’d experienced, and with the people he’d chosen to share them with. He’d wished for her to be there, picked out the ones that he thought she’d appreciate the most—but he would never know now. Each photograph he snapped he had her in mind, riding the moments with a leg on each side, not quite unhappy yet not quite satisfied. These were all moments he hadn’t lived to the brim, all moments he’d forgone appreciating in favour of remembering his loss.

The letter, which had felt so relieving and so raw when he’d written it, now sat browned and jagged on the bare soil. It was full of his emotions, his memories with her, all the things he wanted to say and still said whenever he had the chance to.

She had no letters to send, no words to share, and no memories to relive. From the very first moment, Tanaka had only lived for himself. He’d let her—he remembered with piercing clarity his fear and his relief when he’d missed the feeling of the car running over his skull—he’d turned back and wanted to vomit when he saw her lying there on the ground with her arms bent at the wrong angles and her eyes wide open in terror. He’d been the one everyone comforted, the one everyone felt sorry for and pitied. He was the one his teammates cried for, and he was the one they’d tried cheering up.

All while the last thing she ever knew was fear, fear that clung to her eyes in a film, a wordless scream in her shattered jaw that Tanaka will never hear and will never have to again.

He had it easy, hadn’t he? Even then, facing the sheer drop only a few feet away from where he stood, he dared to listen to the call that beckoned him towards it. It sounded like laughter, and it sounded like cowardice. She never had a choice, not like he did, and if he was a bigger coward than he already was, he’d be tipping himself over the place she’d loved to frequent most, flaunting his choice in her face.

This small patch of ground fit for a two-person picnic, there was no marker and no grave upon it. There had been no traces of their activities here, no remnant that said, ‘she had been here, and this place she had loved’. The offerings Tanaka had brought her were layers of his own guilt and grief that he lay upon her memory, on the grave of himself, who he had been and who he could be; her ashes had long left this place, and if she could love it still, she wouldn’t have loved him then.

When he took a step back from where he’d left his gifts, they looked terribly small and insignificant in the face of the view behind them. He took a deep breath, holding back the tugging impulse to launch them off the mountain too, and forced his feet one in front of the other, all the way back down the mountain trail.

It was ironic, then, that he’d made it impeccably on time for Noya’s party. Not that his oldest, closest friend had organized it, of course, but it was in his honour for getting on the national team, and Tanaka rummaged around in his gut for the sincerity he’d stored away for the afternoon. He found Noya waiting for him in a quiet corner, his lower lip nibbled raw which betrayed his otherwise gallant expression.

“Thanks for coming,” Noya said immediately and jumped up from his seat. Tanaka found his arms gripped so tightly that they were going numb within seconds. “How are you holding up?”

Tanaka smiled and was alarmed with how easily he could. “Better.”

“I—that’s good to hear. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want, obviously, but—you don’t have to. It’s already fantastic to see you.”

Not many people would share his sentiment, Tanaka knew. It wouldn’t look very sporting of him if the guest of honour’s best friend vanished before anyone could even say hello. He didn’t want to make it any harder for Noya than it already was.

“It’s fine,” he said. He shook his arms free of Noya’s vice-like grip and patted his friend’s shoulder’s firmly. “It’s your evening, and I’m here. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

Noya’s expression remained grim, unconvinced. “Yeah, like saying that’s gonna make me. I  _mean_  it, Ryu. I’m not talking it up either—there’s like, a freaking mob out there waiting for you.”

“Me?” Tanaka was surprised. “The hell? It’s not  _my_  party.”

“Dude, you’re like a unicorn. Do you know how rare it is to see you at parties and gatherings like this?”

 _It used to be very often_ , they both knew, but neither said anything. Tanaka reached out and spun Noya around, pushing him away from the dim little alcove and towards the doorway. “I’ll be alright.”

When Noya stayed grim, Tanaka sighed. “I’m damned happy for you, and I’m not gonna ruin your night. You can get me as fucked up as you want as your present.”

“I  _don’t_ ,” Noya grumbled, but had relaxed under Tanaka’s hands. “Okay, only if you say so.”

“I say so.”

Tanaka had every intention of keeping his word, even if Noya didn’t seem to believe him. Undoubtedly, he was going to have a set of eyes fixed on him the rest of the night. To set an example, he stepped ahead and into the massive living room, letting the horrendously loud music drown out Noya’s complaints.  _Come on_ , he mouthed with a familiar grin, and slipped into the crowd of people in search of a drink.

He’d only managed to locate the make-shift bar when a girl, a few years younger than him from the looks of it, appeared shyly in front of him as if unsure of whether he was going to barrel through her regardless. He didn’t, naturally, and paused to look down at her as unthreateningly as possible.

“What’s up?”

She threw a glance over her shoulder at something and refused to meet his eyes.

“I—I’ve got a friend—and, uhm, she’s glad to see you?” Her inflection shot up at the end of her sentence, and she looked a little frustrated with herself. Tanaka smiled.

“Thanks.”

“Only,” she bit her lip, but soldiered on, “you don’t really come out to drinking things, y’know?”

“Yeah, I know.” He shrugged. “Sorry, I guess?”

She looked startled by his apology, and finally glanced up. Immediately, he could tell that she was a few years younger than he had initially assumed. “Oh, I mean, you don’t have to  _apologize_. My friend, she’s—she wants to know if you’d like to grab a drink with her.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder and Tanaka looked at where she pointed. There indeed was a friend, sandwiched in-between a small group of four with drinks already in hand and chatting away. She snuck a peek at him and flushed and turned when he caught her looking.

He turned back to the girl in front of him, who was a good head shorter than he was. She seemed much more at ease now that her message had been delivered and no longer stood as if waiting her execution.

“I think your friend might have more fun with her friends than with me,” he said as kindly as he could. “I’m not looking for anyone at the moment, sorry.”

She blinked. “Not even a drink?”

“Nah.” He gave her a pat on the shoulder before stepping around her with a gentle smile. “Please tell your friend sorry from me. I’ve got a girl waiting for me, you see, and I’m afraid that’s not gonna change.”

 

* * *

 

For the first time in his life,  **Bokuto**  Koutarou crouched, soundless, and scrambled for words that had deserted him.

She lay in his arms, face scrunched up, eyes pressed shut and her mouth twisted in a quiet groan of pain that he was helpless to ease. His arms, for all the strain they could withstand, were useless, trembling, and his palms that were coated with blood and sweat could only shake as he cradled her head on his lap; he wanted to press her close, to soothe her suffering from broken limbs and cracked bones he daren’t look down at, but above all, he was afraid that any movement would hurt her more.

Bokuto realized that he was sobbing out loud when she strained a hand up to brush against his cheek, and smeared a grime covered thumb against the wetness that clung to his lower lip. The sudden sting of salt on a cut startled him.

When she spoke, it sounded as if she did through knives.

“Are you hurt?”

Bokuto watched as she attempted to crack an eye open but winced, closing them again with a shaky breath. “ _Are you hurt?_ ” She repeated.

His face crumpled as he rifled through everything that rushed through him, none of them urgent about his own wellbeing in the slightest and bent down as low as his back would allow him to press his face into her hair, caring nothing about the dirt and salt and the heavy taste of iron against her temple.

“Please don’t die.”

“Kou—”

“ _Don’t die_. Don’t die.” He could hear his voice from a mile away, from a broken little boy kneeling on scorched tarmac and here he was, opening his mouth and letting the shattered words flow. “Tell me you’re going to be okay, please.  _Please._ I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I love you,  _I love you_.  _Please stay with me_.”

“Hey.  _Hey_.” It sounded painful to hear her speak, her breaths rattling in her chest, and Bokuto wanted nothing more but to hold her close, so very close that his life could leak into her frail, twisted body. Forcing his eyes shut, he pictured it with all his might; the frantic, pulsing heartbeat in his chest spilling over into her, past her broken ribs, and clutching at her beating heart so that it couldn’t give up.

“Koutarou,” she said again, and he nodded mutely against her head. He felt a hand slip into his, even if it was slimy and wet and too difficult for him to hold onto forever. “I’m gonna be okay. Kou—Kou, listen to me, love. I’ll be alright, okay? Kou?”

He kept on nodding, rocking back and forth on his knees with her shallow breaths moist against his shredded shirt. She gave a little sigh, one that came from deep, deep down, sounding as if she was very exhausted indeed.

“Don’t cry for me, Kou.” Impossible. Bokuto gave a thick sob and attempted to calm his breaths anyway, because he would do anything she said—anything. She could have demanded he tear his organs out one by one to replace hers and he would’ve done it without a sound. “We’re gonna be okay. I love you so much, and we’re gonna be okay.”

From far away, Bokuto’s narrow world stretched out to the sound of sirens that seemed to be spiralling closer and closer. He felt wrenched in half; he wanted to hold her here against him for the rest of time where he could feel her in his arms, still warm and breathing and saying all those beautiful, sweet words from her bloodied, parched lips. He also needed those ambulances here ten minutes ago, packing her safely into the stretcher so that he would be sure that she’d live, that she’d be fixed as soon as possible, and he would wait by her door for as long as it took until he heard the news he wanted to hear.

He wanted to hear her laugh as she took everything so very facetiously, making light of all the things that should be solemn.  _Just you wait_ , he could hear her saying in his head as she craned her neck from the stretcher,  _once I’m out of surgery, I’m going to be in even better shape than you are_. He would then wait, twiddling his thumbs, until she would come out again, all spick and span, a million-watt smile on her face as she grinned at him, cradling his cheeks in her palms. She would lean in close, her breath tickling his lips, and she’d say warmly to him,  _I’m right here. I told you so, didn’t I?_

“Kou?” He heard her voice again, and he knew that he was back on his knees in the middle of the street with her soft, silky hair matted against her forehead from the gash on her temple. “Kou, Kou,” she repeated weakly, and he leaned down and slotted his lips over hers as desperately as he could. He wanted to taste her for as long as he could, to press down her throat all the things he needed to hear from her, to stop himself from crying all over again. She had no energy left to kiss back, but he could feel her lips curl into a smile underneath his.

“The ambulance is here,” she told him quietly and squeezed his hand. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Bokuto wasn’t sure if he could be brave enough to believe her, but time had run out for him to decide when a strong, firm hand grasped him by a shoulder and tugged him gently away. He was taller and wider than the EMT that stood behind him when he got to his feet, but all he could do to help was to obediently drape himself with the blanket they handed him and stand to one side whilst they shifted her onto a collapsible stretcher.

“I’m going with her,” he said stonily to one of the uniformed men, and they cleared out a seat for him inside the ambulance with understanding looks that carved up his insides with something hideous.

The whole affair lasted an unfair five minutes. Bokuto watched with wide, red-rimmed eyes as a flash flood of professionals and specialists had waltzed onto the scene with their tools and bobs and just like that—those pockets of timelessness as he’d cradled her jagged skull against his shaking fingers, they were nothing—the ground was wiped clean of them, of how much he’d cried and how much she’d spoken to him with that charred voice and lidded eyes. When he reached out for her mindlessly, dull from the anxiety, the woman next to him in uniform and looking loathsomely put-together, gripped his hand before it could make contact.

He snatched it back to his chest and glared at the ground, wounded.

“She’s in a pretty volatile state,” the EMT said, sounding sympathetic. Bokuto shifted to stare at the prone body instead; her chest rising and falling so faintly that if he turned away for a second it might fail in his absence. He kept his hand held close. “You can touch her once she’s out of the ER.”

He said nothing. Quietly, as privately as he can with the small, struggling embers of hope, Bokuto relived in his mind her grin and her words against his cheek, murmuring:  _I’m right here._

The next time he arrived back into himself, forcibly dragged from the depths by a firm shake, Bokuto was informed that it had already been a day since the accident. And perhaps he could accept such a description, if only he didn’t believe that every single broken bone in her body was deliberate, intentional and a heavy enough weight to be foisted upon on his own conscience. The doctor, whose hands were digging harshly into the dips of his flesh, asked in a concerned voice whether he was alright, and if he needed a bed to lie down in.

“I’ll lie down when I see her,” he snapped, rough and angry.

The doctor jerked away and eyed Bokuto like the wild animal he felt very much like.

“In here,” the doctor said. He didn’t touch Bokuto again, but like a wraith without anything to cling onto except for the emerald shimmer of the afterlife, Bokuto followed with mute feet.

Her family was situated in the otherwise generously sized room, and they broke from their stations like a wave upon a dam, taking turns embracing Bokuto with watery smiles. They were trying their very best, he could feel through his numbness, and her mother had crept up on him unawares and had his pale cheeks grasped in her palms like a talisman. Bokuto did his utmost to meet her eyes, but neither of them was deceived that his niceties were anything more than that.

“We were worried about you,” she said slowly, as if speaking to a jittery bird, “you’ve been out cold on the hospital bench and refused to come in with us when we asked.”

He couldn’t recall a single moment of that, only how his fingertips ached from where he’d bitten them down to the flesh. She lifted a hand to stroke his grimy hair like a child, with her other cupping the back of his neck in case he slipped through them again. A staggering pain clenched his throat shut and Bokuto had to swallow twice, hard, to be able to hold back his sharp longing for comfort. The hand behind his neck tightened, and her mother pulled him into a slow, calm hug, rocking him back and forth like he had done before.

When the doctor spoke, the words only barely made sense to Bokuto from very far away. “Her executive functions are gone,” he said from behind that terrible haze, “her internal bleeding…concussion of the brain…” He was still being held within a soft pair of arms that seemed to cling to him for hope as heavily as he leaned on them for the strength to stand.  _I’m right here,_  the words chanted themselves in his head,  _we’re going to be alright_.  _Kou._

“Bokuto?”

Bokuto pulled his head up and searched blearily for the sound of his name. The rocking had stopped, and held at arm’s length, he was alone again, the recipient of all the silent stares in the room. They prickled on his skin like a hundred needles and he kept his gaze hollow on the face of the woman he loved, the woman he was going to marry, lying wordlessly in the centre of the hospital bed. If he dreamt hard enough, perhaps those lips would move, giving weight to their voices he heard regardless.

“The last thing she said was your name, Bokuto.”  _God_ , he hated how he could still hear, how he was still there no matter how far he went away inside. How he could understand every syllable from her mother’s mouth, how that stare was kind, bitter and incriminating all at the same time. “It’s what she would have wanted.”

Turning, he watched her coldly. It may have been that she couldn’t extend her sensitivity that far, or perhaps it was how far she had sunk into the heaviness of her own declaration, but she met his eyes without seeing.

“We weren’t…always in agreement,” her mother admitted. “It’s…I know this is the least I can do for her. To make up for it all.”

Bokuto didn’t bother to wait for her beseeching look; how she dared to ask this as if it was her choice alone—as if she no longer believed that her daughter could make it. As if she’d forgotten those brilliant smiles, those quiet reassurances and her wintery voice in one’s ear holding all the answers to the miniature universe Bokuto hid underneath his heart. The room stood motionless where her monitor still sounded to the rhythm of her pulse, their heads all bowed low and hands behind their backs.

“Bokuto?”

_It’ll be alright. I’m right here._

“She asked for  _you_.”

_Kou?_

Bokuto nodded to the doctor, neck stiff and lips twisted in a grimace, and offered up what remained of him. He made the call with barely a sound, a motion that dragged his head lower and lower, and Bokuto walked out of the room as silently as he had entered, leaving Koutarou behind at her bedside, holding her hand and kissing her brow. He left with them gifts; all their lost time and hidden smiles, the wet laughter as she departed the hospital with his hand in hers and hopes that they could be happy wherever they were now.

In the stale, antiseptic smell of the third-floor bathroom, her blood underneath his nails stayed firmly jammed into the creases of skin no matter how hard he scrubbed and scrubbed.

 

* * *

 

She woke up on the fifth day. The room in its entirety remained unchanged: the heartrate monitor continued to sound its steady, shrill notes, the birds outside sang their morning songs and the steady breaths of a man drifting in a fitful sleep maintained its weary pace. Her eyelids creaked open and her mouth opened and closed without sound.

“Hello?”

 **Kuroo**  startled awake from his shallow sleep when the hoarse, aged voice ground through the peace in the hospital room. As much as his reflexes urged him to leap out of his seat and huddle over her bubble of personal space, the days he had been sprawled prone and unmoving in the lumpy couch had taken its toll on his muscles. He managed instead to crane his neck to look, with his heart in his mouth, and was met with confused, but good-humoured eyes.

“Hello,” he replied faintly, and almost laughed out loud at how ridiculously anti-climactic this all was. While his chest begun to swell against his will, pressing painfully against his ribcage, there were only quiet, shy words that hung about them.

“How long have I been out?”

She moved to shift herself higher up the bed and Kuroo managed to rediscover his limbs in time to reach over and usher her back under the covers. She gave herself a quick look-over, eyes widening at the lattice of needles and tubes hiking up her arms and legs but allowed herself to be pushed.

“I remember a car—” She paused, searching her fingers curled around her sheets, finding nothing. “But that’s it.” She saw Kuroo opening his mouth, and she added nervously, “Does my insurance cover this?”

He snorted, and his chest blew up more when a small smile teased at her worn face.

“If your insurance doesn’t cover a car-crash, I don’t know what it would.”

“Being murdered, maybe?” She suggested, giving it a good think. “Permanently maimed?”

Her hand lay lax on the sterile sheets and Kuroo had to hold himself back from gripping it so tightly that all the connectors and implements fell off. He watched her pulse swell and ebb against the long needle that drank from her wrist.

“I’ll let the doctor know, if you like,” he said.

“No thanks.” Her smile brightened into a tiny beam at him before it faded, and she turned her head to gaze at the tree that grew beside her window. “They might send me off to the psych ward, which’ll be even worse.”

“So very conscious of your insurance,” Kuroo murmured, and watched as a little light returned to her eyes. Her hand lay on top of his, her skin pulled taught over her bones from dehydration, and with purpose and the lightest touch, he traced rings along each digit, twirling his trembling fingers over hers. Still, she watched the leaves flutter through the autumn wind, her private room seemingly too small for her silence and his presence, which went uncommented on.

Kuroo knew this tiny little room better than his own. None of the nurses nor doctors dared touch him when they had first assigned her this part of the ward, and thus Kuroo sat, motionless and vigilant at her bedside for five days, occasionally alternating between the hard, foldable chair and the musty sofa tucked into the far corner beside her bed. The open windows were his only source of time; his broken hours of sleep haunted by sounds of her bones cracking, her muffled whimper and his own scream—and the relief in her eyes, unfocused but aware, when she saw him alive and untouched because she had taken his place. He saw no point in waking the floor with his own shouts and woke often to his lips dry and sealed shut with caking spit, stumbling afterwards into the hallway bathrooms for a hurried wash.

“Would you like to check your phone?” He asked, conscious of her mind wandering through the paths outside in the rehabilitation gardens from her blank, lost expression. “I’ve had it charged.”

He hadn’t allowed it otherwise. It was cracked, of course, from the impact, and the screen was completely shattered. Still, he had it plugged in day and night into the only spare socket in the room, minding it in case someone called. Many did, of course, but on his, which he had let the battery drain out of in favour of hers in case her family attempted to reach her.

But situated in another country, they continued their lives unaware of her situation when she had put Kuroo as her emergency contact. And, from her lack of concern, Kuroo guessed that she at least remembered that, and didn’t remind her of it again. He gave her hand a final squeeze and made to stand.

“I’ll go and let the nurse know you’re up anyway. Better sooner than later.”

“Kuroo,” her voice came haltingly from where she was turned away, and Kuroo stopped where he was. “Do you know how I got into an accident?”

It was a minute before he could speak, and even then, he sounded scratchy even to his own ears. “What do you mean?” He asked slowly.

“I—I’m missing some bits.” Kuroo came to realize, when her voice trembled, that instead of dreaming, the reason she had turned away was because she had been busy fighting the panic that pushed against her control. “I mean, I know it’s just an accident and a lot of people get into those, but I—I can’t remember. That, and a lot of other things.”

“And me? Do you remember me?” The sound of his voice cracking was louder in his head, and he was glad she was turned away, so she wouldn’t have to catch sight of his pale face, twisted and sour.

“Of course,” she said, sounding surprised. “Kuroo, I said your name, didn’t I?”

She did, she had, and Kuroo’s throat was too closed for him to say anything. He dragged a hand across his eyes furiously, one hand on the doorknob and his breaths coming in ragged, heaving sighs.

“Kuroo,” she repeated quietly, and facing the door the entire time he imagined her speaking the wrong name softly into her hands, eyes downcast and lips turned into a frown. “Thank you for being here when I woke up.”

He felt a rush of anger, completely irrational anger, surge through him and for a moment he wanted to whirl back and shake her until she started to cry for all the pain she’d put him through. Until she took back that inane sentence that was an insult to even be voiced out loud—not after what she’d done for him, not after he’d watched her  _die_ for him, and here she—she  _“thank you for being here-d”_  him. He’d be there through death for her, and beyond, and he if he could, he would shout it at her until she remembered every single agonizing second of it all.

Kuroo could only nod mutely and slipped out into the corridor, the door sliding shut with a tinny air-tight squeak behind him.

He surprised himself with how dispassionate he sounded when he informed the front desk of her situation. “She’s missing some memories,” he said calmly, as if reciting a PowerPoint. He kept his hands in his pockets and his expression mild even when the nurses watched him for too long. “She seems okay otherwise. Will you let me know if you need me for anything?”

They didn’t ask him where he was going, even as they hurried into her room, cluttered with a mess of both their belongings that had survived the impeding car. For such a large facility, there really were horrifically few places where he could wander. That room he’d almost built a new house in these past few days had his absence filled almost effortlessly with her vacant smile and sparkling jokes that were there to  _zing_ all the awkwardness away, and Kuroo knew any more of that and he might kill a man.

The double doors to the rehabilitation gardens were unlocked, and Kuroo walked right through them. The tree she had been so enraptured with by her window stood out like a sore thumb in the centre of the sparse park. He sat on the bench, ignoring the blanket of leaves that had piled up along the wooden slats. Kuroo attempted to summon up the grief he had cried silently through the first few nights, if only to remind himself of a purer, less complicated brand of suffering. Where the dip in the sofa he’d left after sleeping there for so long would mean nothing to her, Kuroo turned his closed eyes to the sky and waited for a lost sorrow to come upon him as surely as her summons might not. It was a long time to wait, for there was a hollow in his chest where he’d cried everything out, each growing loss manifesting only as an ache, calling out to him that nothing would ever happen again.

If only that were true. If only the leaves crunched up and falling apart underneath his palms would pause and return to the way they had been a few seconds ago. If only anything he said or thought or wanted to hit would freeze in time and slowly drag themselves back into nonexistence a minute later. He hadn’t realized that his brittle rib cage, so easily shattered by blunt force, could harbour so much resentment for something he’d loved so guilelessly earlier that morning.

If only it could go back, turn back, his breaths forced back into his lungs where he’d expelled them—he could allow himself to loathe the image of her sprawled in her hospital bed with her pointless  _thank you,_  and her kind, gravelly voice calling him Kuroo. And then, a minute would pass, and he could love her once again in the way he wished he was still allowed.

He stayed where he was, belonging nowhere, until the sky had dimmed beyond the overhead of the hospital. It was only until the sound of gravel crunching that disturbed his trance, a pair of harried trainers hurtling in his direction that was far too fast for his liking. Kuroo cracked open an eye and watched he nurse marching towards him, perspiration seeping into her white collar. They must’ve looked all over for him as he’d forgotten his phone somewhere in that god forsaken room.

She was still panting when she spoke. “Mister,” she said tetchily, “you’re still her only emergency contact. If you’d like to come back in, the doctor would like to give you a prognosis and inform you of the follow-up treatment.”

He wondered how much she remembered, but the nurse had revealed nothing about her reaction. Who in their right mind would leave a friend, no matter how close, as their only emergency contact? No questions about that precious insurance policy?

The nurse tapped her foot loudly on the pebbled path, and Kuroo met her eyes, glare for glare. Her fringe was pasted to her forehead with sweat, and staring at it, he supposed he’d given her enough trouble for one evening, no matter how disagreeable he felt like being.

“Alright,” he said, and followed after her.

\- - -

“Thanks for today,” she said, always quietly, and always shyly. “Again.”

“My pleasure,” Kuroo said. “We on for tomorrow afternoon?”

“Ah, yes, of course.” She pulled out her phone, scrolling up the calendar she always had open and tapped at tomorrow’s date. Kuroo spied four other bullet points scheduled in, and his name was highlighted in lilac, sat snugly in the middle of the list. “The tea gardens?”

“The tea gardens.”

“I’ll dress accordingly, then.” Kuroo had to bend down slightly to catch her tentative smile, directed fully at her phone and her fingers curled around the glass edges of it protectively. He wondered if to her, he was still something to be protected from.

He straightened back up and slotted a nice, kind smile in place. That seemed to bring her out of her shell a little, and he threw a step back into the mix, so that she’d be able to stand up straight instead of hunch over her electronics as if she wanted to delve into them.

“I’ll text you,” she said as she waved him goodbye. “Thanks again!”

He waved back and waited for her back to recede out of view in the crowded pedestrian crossing. The doctor would be pleased with the effort he’d been putting in. Kuroo could envision his nodding head, those hideous glasses covering half his face and his pudgy fingers tapping away on his iPad. He didn’t care if he had a bias against him; he was a volleyball player, not a priest.

His phone beeped in his pocket, and he took it out.

_I hope it’s sunny tomorrow!_

At least someone did; it was no-one Kuroo remembered. Occasionally on these miniature visits down memory lane-dates, he would take those pockets of silence and envision himself walking away from the nurse that afternoon. Marching out of the garden and never to return. He could go anywhere he liked, sit alone at the places where she’d take him with her knowing grins and caustic humour, kicking him under the table and leaping onto his back in public and tickling his sides.

She wouldn’t be peeking under her eyelashes at him. Calling him  _Kuroo_ , sending him texts that were meant to be  _nice_ , wringing her fingers in nervousness and stepping on those eggshells around him as if he wasn’t too far heartbroken to really care if she hurt him a little more. He’d be able to grieve properly, to go over the pictures on his phone without thinking about how that face was still walking, talking and smiling, but to a Kuroo that was half-baked in her memories, as she went about her days with only half of the affection, half of the liveliness. She wasn’t lesser. She wasn’t missing any part of her. She was simply different, having vanished bits of the past that made her into the woman who had leapt in front of that car for him, who had cried for him and who had laughed with a punctured lung for him. Those empty spaces had been so swiftly filled with new, unrecognizable parts, that Kuroo had almost reeled from the backlash.

 _‘I hope it’s sunny tomorrow.’_  She hated the sun. She might’ve hated it still but had forgotten that Kuroo knew that about her. After all, who would want to go to a park in the rain?

Kuroo knew he would regret thinking it. He loved her, he loves her still, and he would continue to love her until his last breath. But what was fundamentally her had been crushed underneath those wheels that day and had left him all alone on the operating table. He would regret thinking it. He would regret thinking it for the rest of his days.

If he couldn’t have been the one to die for her instead, then he wished that she’d never survived at all.


End file.
